Page:Leskov - The Sentry and other Stories.djvu/118

 102 boyish heir Fedia Lyamin wandered about the yard in his light, white squirrel fur coat, and broke the cat-ice on the puddles.

"What are you doing there, Fedor Ignatich?" cried the cook Aksinia to him, as she ran across the yard. "Is it fit for you, a merchant's son, to poke about in the puddles?"

But the heir, who was such a trouble to Katerina Lvovna and to the object of her affections, only frolicked about light-heartedly like a young kid, or slept tranquilly opposite his fond great-aunt, not thinking or realizing that he stood in anybody's way or had diminished anybody's happiness.

At last Fedia caught the chicken-pox, and besides had a bad cold and pain in the chest, so the boy was put to bed. At first he was treated with herbs and simples, but at last a doctor had to be sent for.

The doctor came frequently and prescribed medicines, which were to be given to him at certain hours by his grand-aunt; or sometimes she asked Katerina Lvovna to do it.

"Please, Katerinushka," she would say, "you yourself will soon be a mother, you are awaiting the will of God, be so good "

Katerina Lvovna never refused the old woman. Whenever she went to the evening service to pray for "the lad Fedor lying on the bed of sickness,"