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"Don't!" she whispered, looking at him with tears in her eyes. "Don't, Andriusha! It isn't our business. It's God's affair!" Pavel came up to him slowly, looking at his comrade with moist eyes. He was pale, and his lips trembled. With a strange smile he said softly and slowly: "Come, give me your hand, Andrey. I want to shake hands with you. Upon my word, I understand how hard it is for you!"
Shake it once, and the people will be loosened from it; shake it once more, and they'll tear themselves away." The mother smiled. "Everything seems to be simple to you, Andriusha." "Yes, yes, it's simple," said the Little Russian, and added gloomily: "Like life." A few minutes later he said: "I'll go take a walk in the field." "After the bath? The wind will blow through you," the mother warned.
And when you are able to read, then " He stopped and began to laugh; then rose and paced up and down the room. "Yes, you must learn to read! And when Pavel gets back, won't you surprise him, eh?" "Oh, Andriusha! For a young man everything is simple and easy! But when you have lived to my age, you have lots of trouble, little strength, and no mind at all left."
Glancing at her with a light smile, he added, embarrassed but happy: "I will not forget this, mother, upon my word." She pushed him from her, and looking into the room she said to Andrey in a good-natured tone of entreaty: "Andriusha, please don't you shout at him so! Of course, you are older than he, and so you " The Little Russian was standing with his back toward her.
When Andrey left to go to bed, the mother, without being noticed, made the sign of the cross over him, and after about half an hour, she asked quietly, "Are you asleep, Andriusha?" "No. Why?" "Nothing! Good night!" "Thank you, mother, thank you!" he answered gently.
When they're done with you, they tell the soldiers to take you back to prison. So they lead you here, and they lead you there they've got to justify their salaries somehow. And then they let you go free. That's all." "How you always do speak, Andriusha!" exclaimed the mother involuntarily.
The truth you stand for, I comprehend: as long as there will be the rich, the people will get nothing, neither truth nor happiness, nothing! Indeed, that's so, Andriusha! Here am I living among you, while all this is going on. Sometimes at night my thoughts wander off to my past.
I thought you could never get reconciled to us, that you could never adopt our ideas as yours, but that you would suffer in silence as you had suffered all your life long. It was hard." "Andriusha made me understand many things!" she declared, in her desire to turn her son's attention to his comrade. "Yes, he told me about you," said Pavel, laughing. "And Yegor, too!
In the morning Andrey seemed to her to be lower in stature and all the more winning. But her son towered thin, straight, and taciturn as ever. She had always called the Little Russian Andrey Stepanovich, in formal address, but now, all at once, involuntarily and unconsciously she said to him: "Say, Andriusha, you had better get your boots mended. You are apt to catch cold."
"Oh, my dear ones! Andriusha! Pasha!" she shouted. "Good-by, comrades!" they called from among the soldiers. A broken, manifold echo responded to them. It resounded from the windows and the roofs. The mother felt some one pushing her breast. Through the mist in her eyes she saw the little officer. His face was red and strained, and he was shouting to her: "Clear out of here, old woman!"
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