would say,
looking at him as though he were about to set off on a long journey.
"What a lot of trouble I have with you! You must work and do your
best, darling, and obey your teachers."

"Oh, do leave me alone!" Sasha would say.

Then he would go down the street to school, a little figure, wearing
a big cap and carrying a satchel on his shoulder. Olenka would
follow him noiselessly.

"Sashenka!" she would call after him, and she would pop into his
hand a date or a caramel. When he reached the street where the
school was, he would feel ashamed of being followed by a tall, stout
woman, he would turn round and say:

"You'd better go home, auntie. I can go the rest of the way alone."

She would stand still and look after him fixedly till he had
disappeared at the school-gate.

Ah, how she loved him! Of her former attachments not one had been
so deep; never had her soul surrendered to any feeling so spontaneously,
so disinterestedly, and so joyously as now that her maternal instincts
were aroused. For this little boy with the dimple in his cheek and
the big school cap, she would have given her whole life, she would
have given it with joy and tears of tenderness. Why? Who can tell
why?

When she had seen the last of Sasha, she returned home, contented
and serene, brimming over with love; her face, which had grown
younger during the last six months, smiled and beamed; people meeting
her looked at her with pleasure.

"Good-morning, Olga Semyonovna, darling. How are you, darling?"

"The lessons at the high school are very difficult now," she would
relate at the market. "It's too much; in the first class yesterday
they gave him a fable to learn by heart, and a Latin translation
and a problem. You know it's too much for a little chap."

And she would begin talking about the teachers, the lessons, and
the school books, saying just what Sasha said.

At three o'clock they had dinner together: in the evening they
learned their lessons together and cried. When she put him to bed,
she would stay a long time making the Cross over him and murmuring
a prayer; then she would go to bed and dream of that far-away misty
future when Sasha would finish his studies and become a doctor or
an engineer, would have a big house of his own with horses and a
carriage, would get married and have children. . . . She would fall
asleep still thinking of the same thing, and tears would run down
her cheeks from her closed eyes, while the black