“Lazy beggars!” shrieked grandfather, though we never had food from him.
The forest called up a feeling of peace and solace in my heart, and in that feeling all my griefs were swallowed up, and all that was unpleasant was obliterated. During that time also my senses acquired a peculiar keenness, my hearing and sight became more acute, my memory more retentive, my storehouse of impressions widened.
And the more I saw of grandmother, the more she amazed me. I had been accustomed to regard her as a higher being, as the very best and the wisest creature upon the earth, and she was continually strengthening this conviction.
For instance, one evening we had been gathering white mushrooms, and when we arrived at the edge of the forest on our way home grandmother sat down to rest while I went behind the tree to see if there were any more mushrooms.
Suddenly I heard her voice, and this is what I saw: she was seated by the footpath calmly putting away the root of a mushroom, while near her, with his tongue hanging out, stood a gray, emaciated dog.
“You go away now! Go away!” said grandmother.
“Go, and God be with you!”
Not long before that Valek had poisoned my dog, and I wanted very much to have this one.
I ran to the path. The dog hunched himself strangely without moving his neck, and, looking at me with his green, hungry eyes, leaped into the forest, with his tail between his legs.
His movements were not those of a dog, and when I whistled, he hurled himself wildly into the bushes.
“You saw?” said grandmother, smiling.
“At first I was deceived. I thought it was a dog. I looked again and saw that I was mistaken. He had the fangs of a wolf, and the neck, too.
I was quite frightened. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you are a wolf, take yourself off!’
It is a good thing that wolves are not dangerous in the summer.”
She was never afraid in the forest, and always found her way home unerringly.
By the smell of the grass she knew what kind of mushrooms ought to be found in such and such a place, what sort in another, and often examined me in the subject.
“What sort of trees do this and that fungus love?
How do you distinguish the edible from the poisonous?”
By hardly visible scratches on the bark of a tree she showed me where the squirrel had made his home in a hollow, and I would climb up and ravage the nest of tlie animal, robbing him of his winter store of nuts. Sometimes there were as many as ten pounds in one nest.
And one day, when I was thus engaged, a hunter planted twenty-seven shot in the right side of my body. Grandmother got eleven of them out with a needle, but the rest remained under my skin for many years, coming out by degrees.
Grandmother was pleased with me for bearing pain patiently.
“Brave boy!” she praised me. “He who is most patient will be the cleverest.”
Whenever she had saved a little money from the sale of mushrooms and nuts, she used to lay it on window-sills as “secret alms,” and she herself went about in rags and patches even on Sundays.
“You go about worse than a beggar. You put me to shame,” grumbled grandfather.
“What does it matter to you? I am not your daughter. I am not looking for a husband.”
Their quarrels had become more frequent.
“I am not more sinful than others,” cried grandfather in injured tones, “but my punishment is greater.”
Grandmother used to tease him.
“The devils know what every one is worth.”
And she would say to me privately:
“My old man is frightened of devils.
See how quickly he is aging! It is all from fear; eh, poor man!”
I had become very hardy during the summer, and quite savage through living in the forest, and I had lost all interest in the life of my contemporaries, such as Ludmilla. She seemed to me to be tiresomely sensible.
One day grandfather returned from the town very wet. It was autumn, and the rains were falling. Shaking himself on the threshold like a sparrow, he said triumphantly:
“Well, young rascal, you are going to a new situation tomorrow.”
“Where now?” asked grandmother, angrily.
“To your sister Matrena, to her son.”
“O Father, you have done very wrong.”
“Hold your tongue, fool!
They will make a man of him.”
Grandmother let her head droop and said nothing more.
In the evening I told Ludmilla that I was going to live in the town.
“They are going to take me there soon,” she informed me, thoughtfully.
“Papa wants my leg to be taken off altogether. Without it I should get well.”
She had grown very thin during the summer; the skin of her face had assumed a bluish tint, and her eyes had grown larger.
“Are you afraid?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she replied, and wept silently.
I had no means of consoling her, for I was frightened myself at the prospect of life in town.
We sat for a long time in painful silence, pressed close against each other.
If it had been summer, I should have asked grandmother to come begging with me, as she had done when she was a girl.