Page:Korolenko - Makar's Dream and Other Stories.djvu/241

Rh "All right, I'll leave it at that. I'm not a Jew. I'm a decent sort of a fellow. Any one else would have charged you forty copecks at least, I know that for certain, and I'm only asking you twenty, and shall wait till St. Philip's day for the money. But then you will have to look out. If you don't pay, I'll complain about you to the police."

With these words he turned, bowed, and walked away across the pasture, without so much as a glance at the hut at whose door there shone for a long time a white embroidered blouse. It shone against the dark shade of the cherry trees like a little white star, and the miller could not see the black eyes weeping, the white arms stretched out toward him, the young breast sighing for his sake.

"Don't cry, my honey; don't cry, my sugar-plum!" the old woman soothed her child. "Don't cry, it's God's will, my darling."

"Okh, mother, mother, if only you had let me scratch out his eyes, perhaps I should feel better!"

After that adventure the miller's thoughts became gloomier than ever.

"Somehow nothing ever goes right in this world," he said to himself. "Unpleasant things are always happening, a man never knows why. For instance,