Page:Andreyev - The Little Angel (Knopf, 1916).djvu/101

Rh through the opposite window, and on its surface were flocking–like little angels–small, merry white flecks of clouds. Now Petka would turn back to his own window, now run over to the other side of the carriage, with confidence laying his ill-washed little hands on the shoulders and knees of strangers, who answered him back with a smile. But one gentleman who was reading a newspaper, and yawning all the time, either from excessive fatigue or from ennui, looked askance at the boy once or twice in not too friendly a manner, and Nadejda hastened to apologise:

“It is his first journey by rail–and he is interested.”

“Humph,” growled the gentleman, and buried himself in his newspaper.

Nadejda would very much have liked to tell him, how that Petka had lived three years with a barber, who had promised to set him upon his feet; and that this would be a very good thing, since she was a lone weak woman, with no other means of support in case of sickness or when she became old. But the expression of his face was so uninviting, that she kept all this to herself.

To the right of the railway there was a broad stretch of undulating plain, dark green with the continual moisture, and on its edge there stood grey little houses, just like toys, and upon a high green hill, at the foot of which flowed a silvery river, was perched a similarly toy-like white church. When the train, with a noisy metallic