In a corner of the veranda, near a small telephone, a little bronze bell attached to a cord was jerking and banging against the wall.
The boy put his hand over the bell and wound the cord around a nail.
Then the cord stopped jerking and slackened—it had probably broken somewhere along the line.
Angry and baffled, he picked up the receiver.
An hour earlier, Olga had been sitting at a table with a physics textbook before her.
Jenny had come in and picked up a little bottle of iodine.
"Jenny," Olga had said severely. "How did you come by that scratch on your shoulder?"
"Oh, I was walking along," Jenny answered carelessly, "and something prickly or sharp got in my way.
That's how it happened."
"Why doesn't anything prickly or sharp get in my way?" Olga mocked.
"Well, it does!
There's a maths exam in your way.
That's both prickly and sharp.
Watch out you don't get scratched!
Olya, don't you be an engineer, be a doctor," Jenny chattered on, shoving a small mirror in front of her sister's face. "Just take a look at yourself: what sort of an engineer would you make?
An engineer ought to be like this—this—and this." (She made three faces.) "And you look like this—this—and this." Jenny rolled her eyes, arched her eyebrows and smiled sweetly.
"Silly!" Olga said, hugging and kissing her sister and then gently pushing her away.
"Go away, Jenny, and don't bother me.
You'd be more useful if you fetched some water from the well."
Jenny took an apple from a plate and retreated to a corner, where she stood gazing out of the window for several minutes. Then she opened the accordion case and said:
"You know what, Olya?
Someone came up to me today—not bad-looking, blond, white suit—and said,
'What's your name, little girl?'
'Jenny,' I said."
"Jenny, stop bothering me and leave that instrument alone," Olga said without turning round or raising her eyes from the book.
" 'And your sister's name,' " Jenny continued, tugging at the accordion, " 'is Olga, I believe?"
"Jenny, stop bothering me and leave that instrument alone!" Olga repeated, beginning to listen in spite of herself.
" 'Your sister plays very well,' he said.
'Does she intend to study at the Conservatory?' " (Jenny was dragging the accordion out of its case and fixing the strap over her shoulder.) "
'No,' I told him. 'She's specialising in reinforced concrete.'
Then he said,
'Oh!'" (Jenny pressed one of the keys.) "So I said,
'Boo!' " (Jenny pressed another key.)
"You horrid child!
Put that instrument back at once!" Olga cried, jumping up. "Who gave you permission to speak to strange men?"
"All right, I'll put it away," Jenny said huffily. "It wasn't me who spoke to him.
It was he who spoke to me.
I was going to tell you the rest, but now I won't.
You just wait till Dad comes home, he'll show you!"
"Me?
It's you he'll show.
You won't let me do any work."
"No, you!" Jenny cried, picking up an empty pail and flying out onto the porch.
"I'll tell him how you send me running for kerosene, soap and water a hundred times a day!
I'm not a lorry, or a horse, or a tractor either!"
Jenny brought in the pail of water and set it on a bench, but since Olga did not even look up from the book, she went out into the garden, a pout on her face.
She strolled over to the little green clearing in front of the old two-storey shed, took a sling out of her pocket and, stretching the rubber band, shot a tiny cardboard parachutist up into the air.
Soaring upside down, the parachutist turned a somersault and a little blue paper parachute popped open over his head. But just then a gust of wind bore him into the blackness of the loft window.
A casualty!
Something had to be done to save the little cardboard man.