Quote:
The gardens were called the widow's becasue they were kept by two widows, mother and daughter. A camp fire was burning brightly with a crackling sound, throwing out light far around on the ploughed earth. The widow Vasilisa, a tall, fat old womnd in a man's coat, was standing by and looking throughtfully into the fire; her daughter Lukerya, a little pock-marked woman with a stupid-looking face, was sitting on the ground, washing a caldron and spoons. Apperantely they had just had supper. There was a sound of men's voices; it was the labourers watering thier horses at the river.
"Here you have winter back again" said the student, going up to the campre fire. "Good evening."
Vasilisa started, but at once recognized him and smiled cordially.
"I did not know you; God bless you," she said.
"You'll be rich"
They talked, Vasilisa, a woman of experince, who had been in service with the gentry first as a wet-nurse, afterwards a children's nurse, expressed herself with refinemnet, and a soft, sedtate smile never left her face, her daughter Lukerya, a village pesant woman, who had been beaten by her husband, simply screwed up her eyes at the student and said nothing, and she had a strange expression like that of a deaf mute.
"At just such a fire the Apolste Peter warmed himsel," said the student, streaching out his hands to the fire. "so he must have been cold then, too. Ah, what a terrible night it must have been, granny! An utterly dimsal long night."
