The woman began to talk, and said:
"It was six years ago that these orphans lost their parents in one week:
their father was buried on a Tuesday, and their mother died on Friday.
These orphans were born three days after their father's death, and their
mother did not live a day. At that time I was living with my husband in
the village. We were their neighbours, our yard joining theirs. Their
father was a lonely man; he worked in the forest. They dropped a tree on
him, and it fell across his body and squeezed out his entrails. They had
barely brought him home, when he gave up his soul to God, and that same
week his wife bore twins,--these girls. The woman was poor and alone;
she had neither old woman nor girl with her.
"Alone she bore them, and alone she died.
"I went in the morning to see my neighbour, but she, the dear woman, was
already cold. As she died she fell on the girl, and wrenched her leg.
The people came, and they washed and dressed her, and made a coffin, and
buried her. All of them were good people. The girls were left alone.
What was to be done with them? Of all the women I alone had a baby. I
had been nursing my first-born boy for eight weeks. I took them for the
time being to my house. The peasants gathered and thought and thought
what to do with them, and they said to me: 'Márya, keep the girls
awhile, and we will try and think what to do with them.' And I nursed
the straight girl once, but the lame girl I would not nurse. I did not
want her to live. But, I thought, why should the angelic soul go out,
and so I pitied her, too. I began to nurse her, and so I raised my own
and the two girls, all three of them with my own breasts. I was young
and strong, and I had good food. And God gave me so much milk in my
breasts that at times they overflowed. I would feed two of them, while
the third would be waiting. When one rolled away, I took the third. And
God granted that I should raise the three, but my own child I lost in
the second year. And God has given me no other children. We began to
earn more and more, and now we are living here with the merchant at the
mill. The wages are big, and our living is good. I have no children, and
how should I live if it were not for these girls? How can I help loving
them? They are all the wax of my tapers that I have."
With one hand the woman pressed the lame girl to her side, and with the
other she began to wipe off her tears.
And Matréna sighed, and said:
"Not in vain is the proverb: 'You can live without parents, but not
without God.'"
And so they were talking among themselves, when suddenly the room was
lighted as though by sheet lightning from the corner where sat Mikháyla.
All looked at him, and they saw Mikháyla sitting with folded hands on
his knees, and looking up, and smiling.