—about half the thickness of her little finger too short. If she would stand on her tiptoes, she would reach the whole branch, but she does not know how to stand on tiptoes.
Happily for her, a fresh gust of wind, fiercer and colder than the first, bent the top of the lilac bush so low that a blossom, growing on a different branch, however, and not the one the child was longing for, slipped by chance into her hand.
A joyous smile plays about her lips. She holds the blossom in her little hand, apparently not knowing what to do with it. Either she does not know that it may be plucked or she lacks the strength; for a time she stands motionless.
Suddenly there rushes out of the door of the cottage a young woman in a plain but neat house-dress. She looks shyly around about the fields and the graveyard as though she were seeking some one. In the next moment she finds the one; her eye discerns the child under the bush of lilacs.
“Marushka, Marushka!” she cries out. “Where are you?”
At the first outcry the child staggers back, and the lilac blossom is caught in her hand.
“Mamma! mamma!” the child lisps in answer to the call, in that sweet childish tone which an adult can never faithfully imitate.
Now for the first time does the young woman realize in what place her child is standing. A strange blaze flashes from her dark eyes, betraying fright and horror.
“Jesu Maria!” she moans in pain; and as quickly as a hawk falling on its prey, she speeds along and over the graves to her child, crying anxiously, “Marushka! my dear, poor, unhappy Marushka!”
The child looks at her mother with a sweet smile, as though she knew her mother came to fondle her. She keeps the plucked lilac blossom in her little hand, as though she were showing it to her mother; and when the mother comes nearer, she puts the blossom into her mouth and stretches out her arms.
The mother is almost out of breath. She pulls the blossom at once from the child’s mouth, and taking her to her arms, presses the little creature to her breast.
