“A hare, a hare! … Taráska, a hare! … There he is!” shouted little Ólga, pointing to the grey-brown back that gleamed through the bushes. “What’s the matter with you?” she said to Groúsha, when the hare had disappeared.
“I thought it was a wolf,” answered Groúsha, and her terror and tears of despair changed instantly to loud laughter.
“There’s a stupid!”
“I was dreadfully frightened,” said Groúsha, with peals of ringing laughter. They picked up the berries and went on. The sun was now up, and threw bright flecks and shadows on the green, and glittered in the dew that lay everywhere, and that had now saturated the girls’ clothes up to their waists.
The girls had nearly reached the end of the wood, having gone on and on in the hope that the farther they went the more strawberries there would be, and now the shrill voices of girls and women who had come out later to pick berries, resounded from every side. The girls’ mug and jug were nearly full when they came across Aunty Akoulína, who had also come strawberrying. Behind her a little fat-bellied, bareheaded boy, with nothing on but a shirt, waddled along on thick bandy legs.
“Here, he hangs on to me,” said Aunty Akoulína to the girls, taking the boy up in her arms, “and I have no one to leave him with.”
“And we have just scared a hare; such a clatter he made … dreadful!”
“Dear me!” said Akoulína, and put the boy down again. Having exchanged these words, the girls parted from Akoulína and went on with their work.
“Suppose we rest a bit now,” said little Ólga, sitting down in the shade of a hazel-bush. “I’m tired! … Oh dear, we’ve not brought any bread! It would be nice to eat a bit now!”