LITMIR.BIZ

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"A-aah! A-a-ah!"

      Moreover, so slippery was it that, as I knelt and looked at it and laughed with relief at the fact that it had arrived safely, I came near to letting it fall upon the ground: wherefore I entirely forgot what next I ought to have done.

      "Cut it!" at length whispered the mother with eyes closed, and features suddenly swollen and resembling those of a corpse.

      "A knife!" again she whispered with her livid lips. "Cut it!"

      My pocket-knife I had had stolen from me in the workmen's barraque; but with my teeth I severed the caul, and then the child gave renewed tongue in true Orlovian fashion, while the mother smiled. Also, in some curious fashion, the mother's unfathomable eyes regained their colour, and became filled as with blue fire as, plunging a hand into her bodice and feeling for the pocket, she contrived to articulate with raw and blood-flecked lips:

      "I have not a single piece of string or riband to bind the caul with."

      Upon that I set to, and managed to produce a piece of riband, and to fasten it in the required position.

      Thereafter she smiled more brightly than ever. So radiantly did she smile that my eyes came near to being blinded with the spectacle.

      "And now rearrange yourself," I said, "and in the meanwhile I will go and wash the baby."

      "Yes, yes," she murmured uneasily. "But be very careful with him—be very gentle."

      Yet it was little enough care that the rosy little homunculus seemed to require, so strenuously did he clench his fists, and bawl as though he were minded to challenge the whole world to combat.

      "Come, now!" at length I said. "You must have done, or your very head will drop off."

      Yet no sooner did he feel the touch of the ocean spray, and begin to be sprinkled With its joyous caresses, than he lamented more loudly and vigorously than ever, and so continued throughout the process of being slapped on the back and breast as, frowning and struggling, he vented squall after squall while the waves laved his tiny limbs.

      "Shout, young Orlovian!" said I encouragingly. "Let fly with all the power of your lungs!"

      And with that, I took him back to his mother. I found her with eyes closed and lips drawn between her teeth as she writhed in the torment of expelling the after-birth. But presently I detected through the sighs and groans a whispered:

      "Give him to me! Give him to me!"

      "You had better wait a little," I urged.

      "Oh no! Give him to me now!"

      And with tremulous, unsteady hands she unhooked the bosom of her bodice, and, freeing (with my assistance) the breast which nature had prepared for at least a dozen children, applied the mutinous young Orlovian to the nipple. As for him, he at once understood the matter, and ceased to send forth further lamentation.

      "O pure and holy Mother of God!" she gasped in a long-drawn, quivering sigh as she bent a dishevelled head over the little one, and, between intervals of silence, fell to uttering soft, abrupt exclamations. Then, opening her ineffably beautiful blue eyes, the hallowed eyes of a mother, she raised them towards the azure heavens, while in their depths there was coming and going a flame of joy and gratitude. Lastly, lifting a languid hand, she with a slow movement made the sign of the cross over both herself and her babe.

      "Thanks to thee O purest Mother of God!" she murmured. "Thanks indeed to thee!"

      Then her eyes grew dim and vague again, and after a pause (during which she seemed to be scarcely breathing) she said in a hard and matter-of-fact tone:

      "Young fellow, unfasten my satchel."

      And whilst I was so engaged she continued to regard me with a steady gaze; but, when the task was completed she smiled shamefacedly, and on her sunken cheeks and sweat-flecked temples there dawned the ghost of a blush.

      "Now," said she, "do you, for the present, go away."

      "And if I do so, see that in the meanwhile you do not move about too much."

      "No, I will not. But please go away."

      So I withdrew a little. In my breast a sort of weariness was lurking, but also in my breast there was echoing a soft and glorious chorus of birds, a chorus so exquisitely in accord with the never-ceasing splash of the sea that for ever could I have listened to it, and to the neighbouring brook as it purled on its way like a maiden engaged in relating confidences about her lover.

      Presently, the woman's yellow-scarfed head (the scarf now tidily rearranged) reappeared over the bushes.

      "Come, come, good woman!" was my exclamation. "I tell you that you must not move about so soon."

      And certainly her attitude now was one of utter languor, and she had perforce to grasp the stem of a bush with one hand to support herself. Yet while the blood was gone from her face, there had formed in the hollows where her eyes had been two lakes of blue.

      "See how he is sleeping!" she murmured.

      And, true enough, the child was sound asleep, though to my eyes he looked much as any other baby might have done, save that the couch of autumn leaves on which he was ensconced consisted of leaves of a kind which could not have been discovered in the faraway forests of Orlov.

      "Now, do you yourself lie down awhile," was my advice.

      "Oh, no," she replied with a shake of her head on its sinuous neck; "for I must be collecting my things before I move on towards—"

      "Towards Otchenchiri"

      "Yes. By now my folk will have gone many a verst in that direction."

      "And can you walk so far?"

      "The Holy Mother will help me."

      Yes, she was to journey in the company of the Mother of God. So no more on the point required to be said.

      Glancing again at the tiny, inchoate face under the bushes, her eyes diffused rays of warm and kindly light as, licking her lips, she, with a slow movement, smoothed the breast of the little one.

      Then I arranged sticks for a fire, and also adjusted stones to support the kettle.

      "Soon I will have tea ready for you," I remarked.

      "And thankful indeed I shall be," she responded, "for my breasts are dried up."

      "Why have your companions deserted you?" I said next.

      "They have not deserted me. It was I that left them of my own accord. How could I have exposed myself in their presence?"

      And with a glance at me she raised a hand to her face as, spitting a gout of blood, she smiled a sort of bashful smile.

      "This is your first child, I take it?"

      "It is. … And who are you?"

      "A man."

      "Yes, a man, of course; but, are you a MARRIED man?"

      "No, I have never been able to marry."

      "That cannot be true."

      "Why not?"

      With lowered eyes she sat awhile in thought.

      "Because, if so, how do you come to know so much about women's affairs?"

      This time I DID lie, for I replied:

      "Because they have been my study. In fact, I am a medical student."

      "Ah! Our priest's son also was a student, but a student for the Church."

      "Very well. Then you know what I am. Now I will go and fetch some water."

      Upon this she inclined her head towards her little son and listened for a moment to his breathing. Then she said with a glance towards the sea:

      "I too should like to have a wash, but I do not know what the water

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