The conversation had assumed a less agitating tone.
“I can feel the sun,” said the blind boy, growing more animated, “and I can tell when it has set.”
“Because—don’t you see?—I can’t tell why myself.”
“Yes,” said the girl, and she seemed quite satisfied with this reply, and both were silent.
“I can read,” Petrùsya was the first to break the silence, “and I shall soon begin to learn to write with a pen.”
“How do you manage?” she inquired, and suddenly paused abashed, reluctant to pursue the delicate subject.
But he understood her. “I read from my own book, with my fingers,” he explained.
“With your fingers? I could never learn to read with my fingers. I read poorly enough with my eyes. My father says that it is difficult for women to learn.”
“How clever you are!” she exclaimed admiringly. “But I am afraid that you will take cold,” she added; “see how the fog is rising over the river.”
“I am not afraid. What harm can it do me?”
“Neither am I afraid. Could a man possibly take cold more easily than a woman? Uncle Maxim says a man must never fear anything, neither cold nor hunger, nor the thunderbolt, nor the hurricane.”
“Maxim,—the one on crutches? I have seen him. He is terrible.”
“No, he is terrible,” she persisted. “You cannot know, because you never saw him.”
“I do know him. He teaches me everything.”
“Never. He never beats me or screams at me,—never.”
“Well, I am glad of that. How could anybody strike a blind boy? It would be a sin.”
“He never strikes any one,” said Petrùsya, in an abstracted tone of voice, for his sensitive ear had caught the sound of Joachim’s steps.
In fact the tall figure of the Hohòl appeared a moment later on the summit of the rising ground that separated the estate from the shore, and his voice resounded through the tranquil evening air,—“Panitch!”
“They are calling you,” said the girl, rising.
“Oh, yes, do go. I will come to see you to-morrow. They are waiting for you now, and for me too.”
The girl was faithful to her promise, and appeared even earlier than Petrùsya could have expected her. The next day as he was sitting in his room at his daily lesson with Maxim, he suddenly raised his head, listened, and exclaimed eagerly, “May I go for a minute? The girl has come.”