reading and crossing himself.

The travellers fell asleep. Afanasyevna and Sofya came up to the cart
and began looking at Kuzka.

"The little orphan's asleep," said the old woman. "He's thin and frail,
nothing but bones. No mother and no one to care for him properly."

"My Grishutka must be two years older," said Sofya. "Up at the factory
he lives like a slave without his mother. The foreman beats him, I
dare say. When I looked at this poor mite just now, I thought of my own
Grishutka, and my heart went cold within me."

A minute passed in silence.

"Doesn't remember his mother, I suppose," said the old woman.

"How could he remember?"

And big tears began dropping from Sofya's eyes.

"He's curled himself up like a cat," she said, sobbing and laughing with
tenderness and sorrow.... "Poor motherless mite!"

Kuzka started and opened his eyes. He saw before him an ugly, wrinkled,
tear-stained face, and beside it another, aged and toothless, with a
sharp chin and hooked nose, and high above them the infinite sky with
the flying clouds and the moon. He cried out in fright, and Sofya, too,
uttered a cry; both were answered by the echo, and a faint stir passed
over the stifling air; a watchman tapped somewhere near, a dog barked.