Lelechka was quickly carried away from her mother, and those who carried her seemed to run rather than to walk.
THE SMILE
I
Some fifteen boys and girls and several young men and women had gathered in the garden belonging to the Semiboyarinov cottage to celebrate the birthday of one of the sons of the house, Lesha by name, a student of the second class. Lesha’s birthday was made indeed an occasion for bringing eligible young men to the house for his grown sisters’ sake.
All were merry and smiling—the older members of the party as well as the young boys and girls, who ran up and down the yellow sand of the well-kept footpaths; a pale, unimpressive boy, who was sitting alone on a bench under a lilac bush and looking silently at the other boys, was also smiling. His loneliness, his silence, and his well-worn though clean clothes, all pointed to his poverty and to his embarrassment in the company of these lively, well-dressed children. His face was timid and thin, his chest sunken, and his lean hands lay so meekly that it aroused one’s pity to look at him. Still, he smiled; but even his smile seemed pitiful; it was as though it depressed him to watch the games and the happiness of other children, or as though he were afraid to annoy others by his sad looks and his poor dress.
He was called Grisha Igumnov. His father had died not long ago; Grisha’s mother occasionally sent her son to her rich relatives with whom he always felt depressed and uneasy.
“Why do you sit alone? Get up and run about!” said the blue-eyed Lydochka Semiboyarinov as she passed him.
Grisha did not dare to disobey; his heart beat violently, his face became covered with small beads of perspiration. He approached the happy, red-cheeked boys timidly. They looked at him unfriendlily as at a stranger, and Grisha himself felt at once that he was not like them: he could not speak so boldly and so loudly; and he had neither such yellow boots, nor such a round little cap with a woolly red visor turned jauntily upwards as the boy nearest to him had.
The boys continued to talk among themselves as though there were no Grisha. Grisha stood near them in an uneasy pose; his thin shoulders stooped somewhat, his slender fingers held fast to his narrow girdle, and he smiled timidly. He did not know what to do, and in his confusion did not hear what the lively boys were saying. They finished their conversation and scattered suddenly. Grisha, his timid, guilty smile still on his face, walked back uneasily on the sandy path and sat down once more on the bench. He was ashamed because he had walked up to the boys, yet had not spoken to any one, and because nothing had come of it. As he sat down he looked timidly round him—no one paid him the slightest attention, and no one laughed at him. Grisha grew calm.
Just then two little girls, their arms round each other, passed him. Under their fixed stare Grisha shrank, grew red, and smiled guiltily.