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Goodenough to stay to dinner?" said Clare. He went up to the farmer, who in his perplexity had seated himself, and laid his arm on his shoulder. "No, I can't," answered Sarah. "He would eat all we have, and not have enough!" "Now Maly is gone," returned Clare, "I would rather not have any dinner."
He told her all he could about his adoptive parents, and little Maly; but the time before he went to the farm was growing strangely dreamlike, as if it had sunk a long way down in the dark waters of the past all up to the hour when Maly was carried away by the long black aunt. The story accounted to Miss Tempest both for his good speech and the name of his dog.
He felt no resentment; love, old memories, his strange gentleness, and pity for Maly and Maly's mother, saved him from it. The child was big and plump and rosy, but oh, how fallen from his little Maly! And, her child grown such, the mother was poor indeed, though up in the dome of the angels! If she did not know the change in her, it was the worse, for she could not help!
She gave a screech of terror, and he set her down in keenest dismay. Finding that he was not going to run away with her, she did not run farther from him than to safe parleying distance. "You bad boy!" she cried; "you're not to touch me! I will tell mamma!" "Why, Maly! don't you know me?" "No, I don't You are a dirty boy!" "But, Maly! "My name is not Maly; it's Mary; and I don't know you."
The days are long in boyhood, and Clare could do a many things in one. There was the morning, the forenoon, and the long afternoon and evening! He could help on the farm; he could play with ever so many animals; he could learn his lessons, which happily were not heavy; he could read any book he pleased in his father's library, where Paradise Lost was his favourite; he could nurse little Maly.
He used, when alone with them, to talk to this one or that about the friends he had lost his father and mother and Maly and Sarah and did not mind if they all listened. He would even tell them sometimes about his own father and mother how the whole sky full of angels fell down upon them and took them away. But he said most about his sister. For her he mourned more than for any of the rest.
Clare put down his head, as he had seen the rams do, and as Simpson, who ill deserved the name of the generous Jewish Hercules, was on the point of laying hold of her, caught him in the flank, butted him into the ditch, and fell on the top of him. "Run, Maly!" he cried; "I'll be after you in a moment."
Her screams as the black aunt carried her away, would sometimes come back to him with such verisimilitude of nearness, that, forgetting everything about him, he would start to run to her. He felt somehow that it was well with the others, but Maly had always needed him, and more than ever in the last days of their companionship. He wept for nobody but Maly.
I shall celebrate my name-day at the Maly Yaroslavets restaurant, from the restaurant to the benefit performance, from the benefit performance to the restaurant again. I am working, but with very great difficulty. No sooner have I written a line than the bell rings and someone comes in to talk to me about Sahalin. It's simply awful! ... I have found Drishka.
"Have you forgotten Clare, Maly? Clare that used to carry you about all day long?" "Yes; I have forgotten you. You're a dirty, ragged beggar-boy! You're a bad boy! Boys with holes in their clothes are bad boys. Nursie told me so, and she knows everything! She told me herself she knew everything!"
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