In bad company

IV

Little Petro was out alone, on a low hillock by the river-bank. The sun was setting, and the evening was very still. There was no sound but the distant lowing of the village herd. The boy had been playing; but now he laid aside his pipe and threw himself back in the grass, yielding dreamily to the sweet lassitude of the summer evening. He was almost asleep when, suddenly, the hush was broken by light footsteps down below. Annoyed at this interruption, he raised himself on his elbow to listen. The footsteps stopped at the bottom of his hillock. Unfamiliar steps.
"Little boy!" a child's voice called up to him. A girl's voice. "Who was playing here just now, do you know?"
Petro did not like such violations of his solitude, and it was none too cordially that he answered,
"That was me."
An exclamation of surprise burst from the little girl below.
"It was beautiful," she cried, in naive admiration.
Petro made no response. But his uninvited visitor did not leave.
"Why don't you go away?" he demanded at length, after waiting in vain for the sound of her retreating footsteps.
"Why do you want me to?" the girl returned, in that clear voice of hers, now naively wondering.
Her tranquil voice fell pleasantly on the blind boy's ears. But he declared, uncordially as before,
"I don't like people coming where I am."
The little girl laughed.
"Hear that!" she exclaimed. "Goodness me! Is all the earth yours, then, that you can forbid anyone to walk on it?"
"Mother tells everyone not to bother me here."
"Mother?" the little girl said slowly. "Well, but my mother lets me come out here to the river."
Petro had seldom encountered such persistent refusal to do as he wished. Indeed, he had been rather spoiled by the ease with which all yielded to his will. And now a wave of nervous anger passed over his face. He set up in the grass, crying excitedly, over and over,
"Go away! Go away! Go away!"
What might have happened next, it is hard to tell; but at this point Iochim's voice broke in, calling Petro to his tea, and the boy ran off.
"What a horrid little boy!"—were the last words he heard, called after him in a tone of heartfelt indignation.