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The Darling and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
page 18 of 271 (06%)

"Sashenka!" she would call after him, and she would pop into his
hand a date or a caramel. When he reached the street where the
school was, he would feel ashamed of being followed by a tall, stout
woman, he would turn round and say:

"You'd better go home, auntie. I can go the rest of the way alone."

She would stand still and look after him fixedly till he had
disappeared at the school-gate.

Ah, how she loved him! Of her former attachments not one had been
so deep; never had her soul surrendered to any feeling so spontaneously,
so disinterestedly, and so joyously as now that her maternal instincts
were aroused. For this little boy with the dimple in his cheek and
the big school cap, she would have given her whole life, she would
have given it with joy and tears of tenderness. Why? Who can tell
why?

When she had seen the last of Sasha, she returned home, contented
and serene, brimming over with love; her face, which had grown
younger during the last six months, smiled and beamed; people meeting
her looked at her with pleasure.

"Good-morning, Olga Semyonovna, darling. How are you, darling?"

"The lessons at the high school are very difficult now," she would
relate at the market. "It's too much; in the first class yesterday
they gave him a fable to learn by heart, and a Latin translation
and a problem. You know it's too much for a little chap."
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