“You'd better go too,” I say to her mother. “I won't sit talking any more, for I'm tired myself.”
And, seeing I settle down by the stove with my sack under my head, she shakes her head with a smile and goes off too.
XXIX
I am happy and comfortable here; it is morning; the sun coming in through the window, and both Olga and her mother with their hair so smooth and plastered down, a wonder to see.
After breakfast, which I share with the two of them, getting quantities of coffee with it, Olga gets herself up in her new skirt and her knitted kerchief and the jacket. Eh, that wonderful jacket; lasting at the edge all round, and two rows of buttons of the same, and the neck and sleeves trimmed with braid. But little Olga could not fill it out. Nothing near it! The child is all odd corners and angles, like a young calf.
“Couldn't we just take it in a bit at the sides?” I ask. “There's plenty of time.”
But mother and daughter exchange glances, plainly saying, 'tis Sunday, and no using needle or knife that day. I understand them well enough, for I would have thought exactly the same myself in my childhood. So I try to find a way out by a little free-thinking: 'tis another matter when it's a machine that does the work; no more than when an innocent cart comes rumbling down the road, as it may any Sunday.
But no; this is beyond them. And anyhow, the jacket must give her room to grow; in a couple of years it would fit her nicely.