'Mary, you know, we shall cement the cup; indeed we shall do it! It will be a pretty cup,' whispered the old woman.
Mary became more cheerful, and the Cup thought: 'Ah, it is possible I am really good for something! It seems to me I was in too great a hurry to die; it is worth while living in the world.'
On the next day the old woman came home after her day's work with a little toóyes, a sort of cylindrical vessel of birch bark, in which there was a handful of curd and an egg. These she had received from some kind-hearted cook.
'You see, Mary, we are going to cement the Cup!' said she, sitting down on her box.
Mary had been groaning and fretting all the day and night, but now she smiled again. The old woman broke the egg, poured it into an old wooden basin, placed on the box some curd, mixed lime with it, and, kneading all together with the white of egg, she made a thick cement. Smearing the edges of the pieces of our Cup with the mixture, the old woman pressed them together, and placed the Cup carefully in a hot oven, that the cement might harden and become proof against water or anything else. It was hot in the oven for the Cup—dreadfully hot! but she was ready to suffer anything to be the same complete beautiful cup as before. 'Oh, how happy I am!' thought she, awaiting with inward trembling the end of her trials in the oven. 'All is going on well; I will live again!'
Mary in the meantime grew worse: she fretted, groaned, and complained with bitter tears.
'Oh, grandmamma, how I ache! how I ache!'
'Oh, my poor darling!' said the old woman, sobbing, while hot tears rolled down her wrinkled, unwashed face; 'I cannot tell what to do for you, my dear pet.'
In the same room with the old woman, in another corner, there lived a beggar, an old discharged soldier of the time of the Russian Emperor Nicholas, when the discipline was so inhumanly severe and the term of service lasted a whole quarter of a century! He had been in the wars, fought bravely, and now he was quite alone in the wide world. The bullets were still in his body, old age prevented him from working, and he was obliged to get by begging here and there a few copecks. He became accustomed to sorrow; but now it grieved him to see the misery of the old woman and the sufferings of the little girl.
'You are foolish,' said he to the old woman; 'why do you cry, as if the child was dying? You must not do it! Go rather for the physician.'