It was deafeningly noisy and gay. The presence and attention of the “grown-ups” stimulated us; the merest trifles brought into our games extra animation and passionate rivalry.
But it seemed that we three, Kostrom, Tchurka, and I, were not so taken up with the game that we had not time, one or the other of us, to run and show off before the lame girl.
“Ludmilla, did you see that I knocked down five of the ninepins in that game of skittles?”
She would smile sweetly, tossing her head.
In old times our little company had always tried to be on the same side in games, but now I saw that Kostrom and Tchurka used to take opposite sides, trying to rival each other in all kinds of trials of skill and strength, often aggravating each other to tears and fights.
One day they fought so fiercely that the adults had to Interfere, and they had to pour water over the combatants, as if they were dogs.
Ludmilla, sitting on a bench, stamped her sound foot on the ground, and when the fighters rolled toward her, pushed them away with her crutch, crying In a voice of fear:
“Leave off!”
Her face was white, almost livid; her eyes blazed and rolled like a person possessed with a devil.
Another time Kostrom, shamefully beaten by Tchurka in a game of skittles, hid himself behind a chest of oats In the grocer’s shop, and crouched there, weeping silently. It was terrible to see him. His teeth were tightly clenched, his cheek-bones stood out, his bony face looked as if it had been turned to stone, and from his black, surly eyes flowed large, round tears.
When I tried to console him he whispered, choking back his tears:
“You wait! I’ll throw a brick at his head. You’ll see.”
Tchurka had become conceited; he walked in the middle of the street, as marriageable youths walk, with his cap on one side and his hands in his pocket. He had taught himself to spit through his teeth like a fine bold fellow, and he promised:
“I shall leam to smoke soon.
I have already tried twice, but I was sick.”
All this was displeasing to me.
I saw that I was losing my friends, and it seemed to me that the person to blame was Ludmilla.
One evening when I was in the yard going over the collection of bones and rags and all kinds of rubbish, she came to me, swaying from side to side and waving her right hand.
“How do you do?” she said, bowing her head three times.
“Has Kostrom been with you?
And Tchurka?”
“Tchurka is not friends with us now.
It is all your fault. They are both in love with you and they have quarreled.”
She blushed, but answered mockingly:
“What next!
How is it my fault?”
“Why do you make them fall in love with you?”
“I did not ask them to,” she said crossly, and as she went away she added: “It is all nonsense.
I am older than they are; I am fourteen.
People do not fall in love with big girls.”
“A lot you know!” I cried, wishing to hurt her.
“What about the shopkeeper, Xlistov’s sister? She is quite old, and still she has the boys after her.”
Ludmilla turned on me, sticking her crutch deep into the sand of the yard.
“You don’t know anything yourself,” she said quickly, with tears in her voice and her pretty eyes flashing finely.
“That shopkeeper is a bad woman, and I— what am I?
I am still a little girl; and — but you ought to read that novel,
‘Kamchadalka,” the second part, and then you would have something to talk about.”
She went away sobbing.
I felt sorry for her. In her words was the ring of a truth of which I was ignorant.
Why had she embroiled my comrades?
But they were in love; what else was there to say?
The next day, wishing to smooth over my difference with Ludmilla, I bought some barley sugar, her favorite sweet, as I knew well.
“Would you like some?”
She said fiercely:
“Go away! I am not friends with you!”
But presently she took the barley sugar, observing:
“You might have had it wrapped up in paper. Your hands are so dirty!”
“I have washed them, but it won’t come off.”
She took my hand in her dry, hot hand and looked at it.
“How you have spoiled it!”