She used to run up to me, and embrace me with her tiny arms, and kiss me, and say:
"'Náshik mine, beauty mine, darling mine,' And I, joking her, would say:
"'It is not so, motherkin, you do not love me! Just let you grow up, and you will marry, and will forget your Násha.' And she would fall to musing: 'No,' she'd say, 'I had better not marry, if I can't take Násha with me. I will never abandon Násha.' And there! she has abandoned me, she did not wait my time. And she did love me; but, to tell the truth, whom did she not love? Yes, my dear one, you must not forget your mother; she was not human, but an angel of heaven. When her soul will be in the heavenly kingdom, she will love you there, too, and she will rejoice in you there."
"Why do you say, Natálya Sávishna, when she will be in the heavenly kingdom?" asked I. "I think she must be there now."
"No, my dear one," said Natálya Sávishna, dropping her head, and seating herself nearer to me on the bed, "now her soul is here."
And she pointed upwards. She spoke almost in a whisper, and with such feeling and conviction that I involuntarily raised my eyes, and, looking at the moulding, tried to find something there.
"Before the soul of a righteous person goes to heaven, it has to pass through forty ordeals, my dear one, for forty days, and may still be in her house — "
She long spoke in the same strain, and she spoke with simplicity and conviction, as if she were telling the commonest things which she had seen herself, and in regard to which no one could have the slightest doubts. I listened to her, with bated breath, and though I did not understand well what she was telling me, I believed her fully.
"Yes, my dear one, now she is here, is looking at you,
