THE SCHOOLMISTRESS
AT half-past eight they drove out of the town.
The highroad was dry, a lovely April sun was shining warmly, but the
snow was still lying in the ditches and in the woods. Winter, dark, long,
and spiteful, was hardly over; spring had come all of a sudden. But neither
the warmth nor the languid transparent woods, warmed by the breath of
spring, nor the black flocks of birds flying over the huge puddles that were
like lakes, nor the marvelous fathomless sky, into which it seemed one
would have gone away so joyfully, presented anything new or interesting
to Marya Vassilyevna who was sitting in the cart. For thirteen years she
had been schoolmistress, and there was no reckoning how many times
during all those years she had been to the town for her salary; and whether
it were spring as now, or a rainy autumn evening, or winter, it was all the
same to her, and she always -- invariably -- longed for one thing only, to
get to the end of her journey as quickly as could be.