Page:Leo Tolstoi - Life Is Worth Living and Other Stories - tr. Adolphus Norraikow (1892).djvu/65

 58 conversation. She was anxious to learn to whom the children belonged, so she said to the woman, "Are you not their mother?"

"No," said the woman, "I am not their mother, nor yet any relation to them. They were strangers to me, and I have adopted them."

"They are not your children," said Matreona, "and yet you appear to love them so much!"

"How could I help loving them? for it was I myself who nursed them into life. I had a child of my own at the same time, but the good Lord took it away from me. I felt oh! so sorry for it; and yet I had infinitely more pity for these motherless babes."

"But, pray, whose children are they?"