Chapter 142: Sleepy

Sleepy Night. Varka, the little nurse, a girl of thirteen, is rocking the cradle in which the baby is lying, and humming hardly audibly: “Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, While I sing a song for thee.” A little green lamp is burning before the icon; there is a string stretched from one end of the room to the other, on which baby-clothes and a pair of big black trousers are hanging. There is a big patch of green on the ceiling from the icon lamp, and the baby-clothes and the trousers thro…