Is your father in the Army?"
"Yes!" replied Jenny with pride and deep feeling. "He's an officer."
"That means you come under our care and protection too."
They stopped at the gate of another cottage.
There was a red star with a thick black border here.
"See that?" said Timur. "A man left this house for the Red Army, too, but he's dead.
This is Lieutenant Pavlov's house; he was killed not long ago at the frontier.
His wife and little daughter live here—and good old Geika wonders why the girl's always crying.
If you get a chance, Jenny, do something nice for her."
He said all this very simply, but cold shivers ran down Jenny's back, though the evening was quite warm.
She stood there silently, her head bent.
Just for the sake of saying something, she asked:
"Is Geika really good?"
"Yes," said Timur. "His father is a sailor.
He likes to take the mickey out of that swank Kolokolchikov, but he always sticks up for him just the same."
A peremptory, angry shout "Jenny!" made them spin around.
Olga was standing quite close behind them.
Jenny touched Timur's hand. She wanted to lead him up to Olga and introduce him.
But a second call, stern and cold, made her think again.
Nodding apologetically to Timur, and shrugging her shoulders in bewilderment, Jenny walked over to Olga.
"Jenny!" said Olga, on the verge of tears, breathing heavily. "I forbid you to talk to that boy.
Do you hear?"
"But Olga, why?" Jenny muttered. "What's wrong?"
"I forbid you to associate with that boy," Olga repeated firmly. "You're thirteen and I'm eighteen.
I'm your sister. I'm older than you.
And when Dad left, he told me. . .."
"But, Olga, you don't understand a thing!" Jenny cried in despair.
She was trembling.
She wanted to explain, to justify herself.
But she could not.
She did not have the right.
She waved her hand hopelessly and did not say another word.
She went straight home to bed, but sleep would not come for a long time.
And after she fell asleep she did not hear someone knock on the window in the night and deliver a telegram from her father.
At daybreak the shepherd blew his wooden horn.
The old milkwoman opened her gate and drove her cow out to join the herd on the common.
She had scarcely turned the corner when five boys jumped out from behind an acacia shrub and scuttled over to the well, trying not to make a clatter with their empty buckets.
"Pump it!"
"Let's have it!"
"There!"
"Take it!"
One after another, the boys rushed into the yard, cold water spilling on their bare feet as they ran, emptied their buckets into the oak barrel and dashed back to the well.
Timur ran up to Sima Simakov, who was wet from exertion and asked:
"See Kolokolchikov anywhere?
No?
Then he has overslept.
Hurry!
The old woman'll be back any minute."
Timur stole into the Kolokolchikovs' garden, stood under a tree and whistled.
Without waiting for an answer he climbed the tree and peered into the room.