sappy bushes beside the stump of a lime-tree overgrown with young shoots, she heard the continuous angry, desperate chirping of some bird which probably had nestlings nearby, and was displeased about something. The bird was evidently frightened and angry. Ólga looked round the bush, which was surrounded by a mass of tall grass with white blossoms, and there she saw something blue—unlike any kind of forest plant. She stopped and gazed at it. It was Míshka—whom the bird feared and was angry with.
Míshka lay on his fat stomach, sleeping sweetly, his head on his arms, his plump, crooked little legs stretched out.
Ólga called his mother, woke the boy, and gave him some of her strawberries. And for a long time after that, Ólga used to tell her father, mother, neighbours and everybody she met, how she had looked for and found Akoulína’s boy.
The sun stood high above the forest, scorching the earth and everything on it.
“Ólga, come and bathe!” said some other girls she met. And the whole crowd of them went down, singing, to the river. Splashing, shrieking, and kicking about, the girls did not notice how a dark, lowering cloud arose, now hiding, now revealing the sun, nor how strong the flowers and birch-leaves began to smell, nor the low rumbling of thunder. They had hardly time to get dressed before the rain drenched them to the skin. With their garments dark with wet and clinging to them, the girls ran home, had something to eat, and then took their father his dinner in the field where he was earthing up potatoes with the plough.
By the time they got home again and had finished their dinner, their clothes were already dry. Then they picked over their strawberries, put them into bowls, and took them to Nicholas Semyónovitch’s house, where they were generally well paid; but this time the strawberries were refused.