VIII.
After that first excursion in the spring, the boy was delirious for several days. He either lay quiet and motionless upon his bed, or kept up a constant muttering, as if he were listening to something. Meanwhile the peculiar expression of wonder never left his face.
“He really looks as if he were trying in vain to understand something,” said the young mother.
Maxim had grown thoughtful; he merely nodded. He had suspected that the boy’s strange alarm, as well as his swoon, might be attributed to the numerous impressions which the boy’s perceptive faculties had been unable to grasp; and he decided to allow these impressions to find their way into the mind of the convalescent child by degrees, disintegrated, so to speak, into their component parts. The windows of the invalid’s room had been closed, but when he began to recover, they were occasionally opened. Some member of the family used to lead him about the rooms, and into the vestibule, the yard, and the garden. Every time his mother observed a look of alarm upon his face, she would explain to him the nature of the sounds that perplexed him. “That is the shepherd’s horn you hear beyond the wood,” she explained; “and that sound which you hear above the twittering of the sparrows is the note of the red-wing. Listen to the stork gurgling on his wheel.[5] He has just arrived from distant lands, and is now building his nest on the old spot.”
As the mother spoke thus, the boy turned toward her, his face beaming with gratitude, and seized her hand and nodded, as with a thoughtful and intelligent expression he continued to listen.