Page:Sologub Sweet Scented Name.djvu/84

 with an ugly front. From this building came a pungent smell of lime and dry brick-dust.

Several children were running about in the yard, shrieking and quarrelling. They belonged to the door-keeper, the servants, and the humbler inhabitants of the building. Little twelve-year-old Grishka, the son of Anushka, the cook at No. 17, looked out on them all from the fourth-floor kitchen window. He lay on his stomach in the window-seat, his thin little legs in their short dark-blue knickers, and his bare feet stretched out behind him.

Grishka's mother wouldn't let him go out into the yard this morning; she was in a bad temper. She remembered that Grishka had broken a cup yesterday; and though he had been beaten then as a punishment, she had reminded him of it again this morning.

"You're just spoilt," said she. "There's no need for you to run about in the yard. You'll stay indoors to-day, and you can learn your lessons."

"I haven't got any examination," Grishka reminded her with some pride. And as usual, when he remembered his school triumphs he laughed joyfully. But his mother looked sternly at him and said: