ery quiet close to the
swinging cradle, waiting till old Babka Tanya, the nurse, should pull
the shawls a little way aside and let them see the pink, crumpled
face of the little Nikolai, and the yellow fluff, just like a
duckling's, which covered his bumpy pink head.

At last, towards evening, old Peter packed what was left of the hay
into the cart, and packed Vanya and Maroosia in with the hay.
Everybody said good-byes all round, and Peter climbed in and took up
the rope reins.

"He'll be a fine man," he shouted through the door to Nastasia, "a
fine man; and God grant he'll be as healthy as he is good.--Till we
meet again," he cried out merrily to the villagers; and Vanya and
Maroosia waved their hands, and off they drove, back again to the hut
in the forest.

They were very much quieter on the way back than they had been when
they drove to the village in the morning. And the early summer day was
quiet as it came to its end. There was a corncrake rattling in the
fields, and more than once they saw frogs hop out of the road as they
drove by in the twilight. A hare ran before them through the dusk and
disappeared. And when they came to the wooden bridge over the stream,
a tall gray bird with a long beak rose up from the bank and flew
slowly away, carrying his long legs, like a thin pair of crutches,
straight out behind him.

"Who is that?" asked Vanya sleepily from his nest in the hay.

"That is Mr. Crane," said old Peter. "Perhaps he is on his way to
visit Miss Heron and tell her that this time he has really made up his
mind, and to ask her to let bygones be bygones."

"What bygones?" said Vanya.

Old Peter watched the crane's slow, steady flight above the low marshy
ground on either side of the stream, and then he said,--

"Why, surely you know all about that. It is an old story, little one,
and I must have told it you a dozen times."

"No, never, grandfather," said Maroosia. She was nearly as sleepy as
Vanya after the day in the village, and the fuss and pleasure of the
christening.

"Oh, well," said old Peter; and he told the tale of Mr. Crane and Miss
Heron as the cart bumped slowly along the rough road, while Vanya and
Maroosia looked out with sleepy eyes from their nest of hay and
listened, and the sky turned green, and the trees grew dim, and the
frogs croaked in the ditches.

* * * * *

Mr. Crane and Miss Heron lived in a marsh five miles across from end to
end. Th