The door banged, men came and went. Maria Vasilievna sat absorbed in the same thoughts that had occupied her before, and the concertina behind the partition never ceased making music for an instant. Patches of sunlight that had lain on the floor when she had come in had moved up to the counter, then to the walls, and now had finally disappeared. So it was afternoon. The carriers at the table next to hers rose and prepared to leave. The little peasant went up to Maria Vasilievna swaying slightly, and held out his hand. The others followed him; all shook hands with the school teacher, and went out one by one. The door banged and whined nine times.
“Get ready, Vasilievna!” Simon cried.
They started again, still at a walk.
“A little school was built here in Nijni Gorodishe, not long ago,” said Simon, looking back. “Some of the people sinned greatly.”
“In what way?”
“It seems the president of the school board grabbed one thousand roubles, and the warden another thousand, and the teacher five hundred.”
“A school always costs several thousand roubles. It is very wrong to repeat scandal, daddy. What you have just told me is nonsense.”
“I don’t know anything about it. I only tell you what people say.”
It was clear, however, that Simon did not believe the school teacher. None of the peasants believed her. They all thought that her salary was too large (she got twenty roubles a month, and they thought that five would have been plenty), and they also believed that most of the money which she collected from the children for wood she pocketed herself. The warden thought as all the other peasants did, and made a little out of the wood himself, besides receiving secret pay from the peasants unknown to the authorities.
But now, thank goodness, they had finally passed through the last of the woods, and from here on their road would lie through flat fields all the way to Viasovia. Only a few miles more to go, and then they would cross the river, and then the railway track, and then they would be at home.