The tale of the disheveled sparrow read the text online, download for free. A disheveled sparrow I once found in a stall

The blacksmith hit the anvil eight times and wanted to hit the ninth, but his hand trembled and hung in the air. So, with his hand raised, he stood for a whole hour, until the time came to strike nine blows on the anvil.

Masha stood at the window and didn’t look back. If you look around, Nanny Petrovna will certainly wake up and urge you to sleep.

Petrovna dozed on the sofa, and mother, as always, went to the theater. She danced in the theater, but never took Masha with her.

The theater was huge, with stone columns. On its roof cast-iron horses reared up. They were held back by a man with a wreath on his head - he must have been strong and brave. He managed to stop the hot horses at the very edge of the roof. Horses' hooves hung over the square. Masha imagined what a commotion would have been if the man had not restrained the cast-iron horses: they would have fallen from the roof into the square and rushed past the policemen with thunder and ringing.

Mom has been worried all these last days. She was preparing to dance Cinderella for the first time and promised to take Petrovna and Masha to the first performance. Two days before the performance, my mother took out a small bouquet of flowers made of thin glass from a chest. Mashin’s father gave it to his mother. He was a sailor and brought this bouquet from some distant country.

Then Mashin’s father went to war, sank several fascist ships, sank twice, was wounded, but remained alive. And now he is far away again, in a country with the strange name “Kamchatka”, and will not return soon, only in the spring.

Mom took out a glass bouquet and quietly said a few words to him. It was surprising because my mother had never talked to things before.

“There,” my mother whispered, “that’s what you’ve been waiting for.”

- What are you waiting for? – asked Masha.

“You’re little, you don’t understand anything yet,” my mother answered. “Dad gave me this bouquet and said: “When you dance Cinderella for the first time, be sure to pin it to your dress after the ball in the palace.” Then I will know that you remembered me at this time.”

“But I understand,” Masha said angrily.

- What did you understand?

- All! - Masha answered and blushed: she didn’t like it when people didn’t believe her.

Mom put the glass bouquet on her table and told Masha not to dare touch it even with her little finger, because it was very fragile.

That evening the bouquet lay behind Masha on the table and sparkled. It was so quiet that everything seemed to be sleeping around: the whole house, and the garden outside the windows, and the stone lion that sat below at the gate and became increasingly white from the snow. Only Masha, heating and winter were awake. Masha looked outside the window, the heating quietly squeaked its warm song, and winter kept falling and falling silent snow from the sky. He flew past the lanterns and lay down on the ground. And it was incomprehensible how such white snow could fly from such a black sky. And it was still unclear why, in the midst of winter and frost, large red flowers bloomed in a basket on my mother’s table. But the most incomprehensible thing was the gray-haired crow. She sat on a branch outside the window and looked, without blinking, at Masha.

The crow was waiting for Petrovna to open the window to ventilate the room at night and take Masha to wash.

As soon as Petrovna and Masha left, the crow flew up to the window, squeezed into the room, grabbed the first thing that caught its eye, and ran away. She was in a hurry, forgot to wipe her paws on the carpet and left wet footprints on the table. Every time Petrovna returned to the room, she threw up her hands and shouted:

- Robber! She snatched something again!

Masha also threw up her hands and, together with Petrovna, began to hastily look for what the crow had taken away this time. Most often, the crow carried sugar, cookies and sausage.

A crow lived in a stall that was boarded up for the winter, where they sold ice cream in the summer. The crow was stingy and grumpy. She stuffed all her wealth into the cracks of the stall with her beak so that the sparrows would not steal them.

Sometimes at night she dreamed that sparrows had crept into the stall and were gouging out pieces of frozen sausage, apple peels and silver candy wrappers from the cracks. Then the crow croaked angrily in its sleep, and the policeman on the next corner looked around and listened. He had long heard croaking from the stall at night and was surprised. Several times he approached the stall and, blocking the light of the street lamp with his palms, peered inside. But the stall was dark, and only a broken box was visible on the floor.

One day a crow found a small disheveled sparrow named Pashka in a stall.

Life has become difficult for the sparrows. There were not enough oats, because there were almost no horses left in the city. In the old days - Pashkin’s grandfather, an old sparrow nicknamed Chichkin, sometimes recalled them - the sparrow tribe spent all their days jostling around the cab stands, where oats spilled out of horse bags onto the pavement.

And now there are only cars in the city. They don’t feed on oats, they don’t chew them like good-natured horses, but they drink some kind of poisonous water with a pungent odor. The Sparrow tribe has thinned out.

Some sparrows moved to the village, closer to the horses, and others moved to seaside towns, where grain is loaded onto ships, and therefore the sparrow life there is full and cheerful.

“Before,” Chichkin said, “sparrows gathered in flocks of two to three thousand. It happened that they would fly up and rush through the air, so not only people, but even the carriage horses would shy away and mutter: “Lord, save and have mercy!” Is there really no justice for these brats?“

And what sparrow fights there were in the markets! Pooh flew in clouds. Now such fights will never be allowed..."

The crow caught Pashka as soon as he ducked into the stall and did not yet have time to pick anything out of the crack. She hit Pashka on the head with her beak. Pashka fell and closed his eyes: he pretended to be dead.

The crow threw him out of the stall and finally cawed - he scolded the entire thieving sparrow tribe.

The policeman looked around and approached the stall. Pashka was lying in the snow: he was dying from a pain in his head and only quietly opened his beak.

- Oh, you homeless child! - said the policeman, took off his mitten, put Pashka in it and hid the mitten with Pashka in his overcoat pocket. - You have a sad life, you sparrow!

Pashka lay in his pocket, blinking his eyes and crying from resentment and hunger. If only I could peck at any crumb! But the policeman had no bread crumbs in his pocket, but only useless crumbs of tobacco lying around.

In the morning, Petrovna and Masha went for a walk in the park. The policeman called Masha over and asked sternly:

- Don’t you, citizen, need a sparrow? For education?

Masha replied that she needed the sparrow, and even very much. Then the red, weather-beaten face of the policeman suddenly gathered wrinkles. He laughed and pulled out a mitten with Pashka:

- Take it! With a mitten. Otherwise he'll get away. Bring me the mitten later. I leave my post no earlier than twelve o'clock.

Masha brought Pashka home, smoothed his feathers with a brush, fed him and released him. Pashka sat down on the saucer, drank tea from it, then sat on the blacksmith’s head, even began to doze off, but the blacksmith eventually got angry, swung his hammer, and wanted to hit Pashka. Pashka flew noisily onto the head of fabulist Krylov. Krylov was bronze, slippery - Pashka could barely stay on it. And the blacksmith, getting angry, began to pound on the anvil - and pounded it eleven times.

Pashka lived in Masha’s room for a whole day and saw in the evening how an old crow flew into the window and stole a smoked fish head from the table. Pashka hid behind a basket with red flowers and sat there quietly.

Since then, Pashka flew to Masha every day, pecked at the crumbs and wondered how to thank Masha. Once he brought her a frozen horned caterpillar - he found it on a tree in the park. But Masha did not eat the caterpillar, and Petrovna, cursing, threw the caterpillar out the window.

Then Pashka, to spite the old crow, began deftly stealing stolen things from the stall and bringing them back to Masha. Either he will bring in a dried marshmallow, or a petrified piece of pie, or a red piece of candy.

The crow must have stolen not only from Masha, but also from other houses, because Pashka sometimes made mistakes and took other people’s things: a comb, a playing card - the queen of clubs - and a golden feather from an “eternal” pen.

Pashka would fly into the room with these things, throw them on the floor, make several loops around the room and quickly, like a small fluffy projectile, disappear outside the window.

That evening Petrovna did not wake up for a long time. Masha was curious to see how the crow squeezed through the window. She had never seen this.

Masha climbed onto a chair, opened the window and hid behind the closet. First, large snow flew through the window and melted on the floor, and then suddenly something creaked. A crow climbed into the room, jumped onto my mother’s table, looked in the mirror, fluttered when I saw the same angry crow there, then croaked, stealthily grabbed a glass bouquet and flew out the window. Masha screamed. Petrovna woke up, groaned and cursed. And my mother, when she returned from the theater, cried for so long that Masha cried with her. And Petrovna said that there was no need to kill yourself, maybe there would be a glass bouquet - unless, of course, the stupid crow dropped it in the snow.

Pashka arrived in the morning. He sat down to rest on the fabulist Krylov, heard the story about the stolen bouquet, became ruffled and thought about it.

Then, when my mother went to a rehearsal at the theater, Pashka tagged along with her. He flew from signs to lampposts, from them to trees, until he reached the theater. There he sat for a while on the muzzle of the cast-iron horse, cleaned his beak, wiped away a tear with his paw, chirped and disappeared.

In the evening, mother put a festive white apron on Masha, and Petrovna threw a brown satin shawl over her shoulders, and everyone went to the theater together. And at that very hour, Pashka, on Chichkin’s orders, gathered all the sparrows that lived nearby, and the whole flock of sparrows attacked the crow stall where the glass bouquet was hidden.

The sparrows, of course, did not immediately decide to attack the stall, but settled on neighboring roofs and teased the crow for two hours. They thought she would get angry and fly out of the stall. Then it will be possible to arrange a fight on the street, where it is not as crowded as in a stall, and where everyone can fall on the crow at once. But the crow was a scientist, knew the sparrow’s tricks and did not leave the stall.

Then the sparrows finally gathered their courage and began to jump into the stall one after another. There was such a squeak, noise and fluttering that a crowd immediately gathered around the stall. A policeman came running. He looked into the stall and recoiled: sparrow fluff was flying all over the stall, and nothing could be made out in this fluff.

- Wow! - said the policeman. - This is hand-to-hand combat according to the regulations!

The policeman began to tear off the boards in order to open the boarded up door to the stall and stop the fight.

At this time, all the strings on the violins and cellos in the theater orchestra trembled quietly. The tall man waved his pale hand, slowly moved it, and under the growing thunder of the music, the heavy velvet curtain swayed, easily floated to the side, and Masha saw a large elegant room, flooded with the yellow sun, and rich freak sisters, and an evil stepmother, and her mother - thin and beautiful, in an old gray dress.

- Cinderella! – Masha quietly screamed and could no longer tear herself away from the stage.

There, in a blaze of blue, pink, gold and moonlight, a palace appeared. And my mother, running away from it, lost her glass slipper on the stairs. It was very good that the music all the time did nothing but grieve and rejoice for my mother, as if all these violins, oboes, flutes and trombones were living, kind creatures. They tried their best to help my mother together with the tall conductor. He was so busy helping Cinderella that he never even looked back at the audience.

And this is a great pity, because there were many children in the hall with their cheeks glowing with delight.

Even the old ushers, who never watch performances, but stand in the corridors at the doors with bundles of programs in their hands and large black binoculars - even these old ushers silently entered the hall, closed the doors behind their backs and looked at Masha’s mother. And one even wiped his eyes. And how could he not shed tears if the daughter of his deceased comrade, a conductor just like him, danced so well.

And so, when the performance ended and the music sang so loudly and cheerfully about happiness that people smiled to themselves and only wondered why the happy Cinderella had tears in her eyes - at that very time he burst into the auditorium, rushing and straying along the theater stairs , a small disheveled sparrow. It was immediately obvious that he had jumped out of a brutal fight.

He circled above the stage, blinded by hundreds of lights, and everyone noticed that in his beak there was something unbearably shiny, like a crystal twig.

The hall became noisy and fell silent. The conductor raised his hand and stopped the orchestra. In the back rows, people began to stand up to see what was happening on stage. The sparrow flew up to Cinderella. She stretched out her hands to him, and the sparrow in flight threw a small crystal bouquet into her palm. Cinderella pinned it to her dress with trembling fingers. The conductor waved his baton and the orchestra thundered. The theater lights trembled with applause. The sparrow flew under the dome of the hall, sat down on the chandelier and began to clean the feathers disheveled in the fight.

Cinderella bowed and laughed, and Masha, if she didn’t know for sure, would never have guessed that this Cinderella was her mother.

And then, in her house, when the lights were turned off and late night entered the room and ordered everyone to sleep, Masha asked her mother in her sleep:

– When you pinned the bouquet, did you think about dad?

“Yes,” my mother answered after a pause.

- Why are you crying?

“Because I’m glad that people like your dad exist in the world.”

- That’s not true! - Masha muttered. - They laugh with joy.

“They laugh from little joy,” my mother answered, “but from great joy they cry.” Now sleep!

Masha fell asleep. Petrovna also fell asleep. Mom went to the window. Pashka was sleeping on a branch outside the window. It was quiet in the world, and the heavy snow that fell and fell from the sky added to the silence. And my mother thought that just like snow, happy dreams and fairy tales fall on people.

Performer: Rafael Kleiner, Natalia Minaeva
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Konstantin Paustovsky

Disheveled Sparrow

On the old wall clock, an iron blacksmith the size of a toy soldier raised a hammer. The clock clicked and the blacksmith struck a small copper anvil with a hammer with a drawbar. A hasty ringing sound fell across the room, rolled under the bookcase and died away.
The blacksmith hit the anvil eight times and wanted to hit the ninth, but his hand trembled and hung in the air. So, with his hand raised, he stood for a whole hour, until the time came to strike nine blows on the anvil.
Masha stood at the window and didn’t look back. If you look around, Nanny Petrovna will certainly wake up and urge you to sleep.
Petrovna dozed on the sofa, and mother, as always, went to the theater. She danced in the theater, but never took Masha with her.
The theater was huge, with stone columns. On its roof cast-iron horses reared up. They were held back by a man with a wreath on his head - he must have been strong and brave. He managed to stop the hot horses at the very edge of the roof. Horses' hooves hung over the square. Masha imagined what a commotion would have been if the man had not restrained the cast-iron horses: they would have fallen from the roof into the square and rushed past the policemen with thunder and ringing.
Mom has been worried all these last days. She was preparing to dance Cinderella for the first time and promised to take Petrovna and Masha to the first performance. Two days before the performance, my mother took out a small bouquet of flowers made of thin glass from a chest. Mashin’s father gave it to his mother. He was a sailor and brought this bouquet from some distant country.
Then Mashin’s father went to war, sank several fascist ships, sank twice, was wounded, but remained alive. And now he is far away again, in a country with the strange name “Kamchatka”, and will not return soon, only in the spring.
Mom took out a glass bouquet and quietly said a few words to him. It was surprising because my mother had never talked to things before.
“There,” my mother whispered, “that’s what you’ve been waiting for.”
- What are you waiting for? - asked Masha.
“You’re little, you don’t understand anything yet,” my mother answered. “Dad gave me this bouquet and said: “When you dance Cinderella for the first time, be sure to pin it to your dress after the ball in the palace. Then I will know that you remembered me at that time.”
“But I understand,” Masha said angrily.
- What did you understand?
- All! - Masha answered and blushed: she didn’t like it when people didn’t believe her.
Mom put the glass bouquet on her table and told Masha not to dare touch it even with her little finger, because it was very fragile.
That evening the bouquet lay behind Masha on the table and sparkled. It was so quiet that everything seemed to be sleeping around: the whole house, and the garden outside the windows, and the stone lion that sat below at the gate and became increasingly white from the snow. Only Masha, heating and winter were awake. Masha looked outside the window, the heating quietly squeaked its warm song, and winter kept falling and falling silent snow from the sky. He flew past the lanterns and lay down on the ground. And it was incomprehensible how such white snow could fly from such a black sky. And it was still unclear why, in the midst of winter and frost, large red flowers bloomed in a basket on my mother’s table. But the most incomprehensible thing was the gray-haired crow. She sat on a branch outside the window and looked, without blinking, at Masha.
The crow was waiting for Petrovna to open the window to ventilate the room at night and take Masha to wash.
As soon as Petrovna and Masha left, the crow flew up to the window, squeezed into the room, grabbed the first thing that caught its eye, and ran away. She was in a hurry, forgot to wipe her paws on the carpet and left wet footprints on the table. Every time Petrovna returned to the room, she threw up her hands and shouted:
- Robber! She snatched something again!
Masha also threw up her hands and, together with Petrovna, began to hastily look for what the crow had taken away this time. Most often, the crow carried sugar, cookies and sausage.
A crow lived in a stall that was boarded up for the winter, where they sold ice cream in the summer. The crow was stingy and grumpy. She stuffed all her wealth into the cracks of the stall with her beak so that the sparrows would not steal them.
Sometimes at night she dreamed that sparrows had crept into the stall and were gouging out pieces of frozen sausage, apple peels and silver candy wrappers from the cracks. Then the crow croaked angrily in its sleep, and the policeman on the next corner looked around and listened. He had long heard croaking from the stall at night and was surprised. Several times he approached the stall and, blocking the light of the street lamp with his palms, peered inside. But the stall was dark, and only a broken box was visible on the floor.
One day a crow found a small disheveled sparrow named Pashka in a stall.
Life has become difficult for the sparrows. There were not enough oats, because there were almost no horses left in the city. In the old days - Pashkin’s grandfather, an old sparrow nicknamed Chichkin, sometimes recalled them - the sparrow tribe spent all their days jostling around the cab stands, where oats spilled out of horse bags onto the pavement.
And now there are only cars in the city. They don’t feed on oats, they don’t chew them like good-natured horses, but they drink some kind of poisonous water with a pungent odor. The Sparrow tribe has thinned out.
Some sparrows moved to the village, closer to the horses, and others moved to seaside towns, where grain is loaded onto ships, and therefore the sparrow life there is full and cheerful.
“Before,” Chichkin said, “sparrows would gather in flocks of two or three thousand. It would happen that they would fly up and rush through the air, not just people, but even carriage horses would shy away and mutter: “Lord, save and have mercy!” Is there really no government for these brats?"
And what sparrow fights there were in the markets! Pooh flew in clouds. Now such fights will never be allowed..."
The crow caught Pashka as soon as he ducked into the stall and did not yet have time to pick anything out of the crack. She hit Pashka on the head with her beak. Pashka fell and closed his eyes: he pretended to be dead.
The crow threw him out of the stall and finally cawed - he scolded the entire thieving sparrow tribe.
The policeman looked around and approached the stall. Pashka was lying in the snow: he was dying from a pain in his head and only quietly opened his beak.
- Oh, you homeless child! - said the policeman, took off his mitten, put Pashka in it and hid the mitten with Pashka in his overcoat pocket. - You have a sad life, you sparrow!
Pashka lay in his pocket, blinking his eyes and crying from resentment and hunger. If only I could peck at any crumb! But the policeman had no bread crumbs in his pocket, but only useless crumbs of tobacco lying around.
In the morning, Petrovna and Masha went for a walk in the park. The policeman called Masha over and asked sternly:
- You, citizen, don’t need a sparrow? For education?
Masha replied that she needed the sparrow, and even very much. Then the red, weather-beaten face of the policeman suddenly gathered wrinkles. He laughed and pulled out a mitten with Pashka:
- Take it! With a mitten. Otherwise he'll get away. Bring me the mitten later. I leave my post no earlier than twelve o'clock.
Masha brought Pashka home, smoothed his feathers with a brush, fed him and released him. Pashka sat down on the saucer, drank tea from it, then sat on the blacksmith’s head, even began to doze off, but the blacksmith eventually got angry, swung his hammer, and wanted to hit Pashka. Pashka flew noisily onto the head of fabulist Krylov. Krylov was bronze, slippery - Pashka could barely stay on it. And the blacksmith, getting angry, began to pound on the anvil - and pounded it eleven times.
Pashka lived in Masha’s room for a whole day and saw in the evening how an old crow flew into the window and stole a smoked fish head from the table. Pashka hid behind a basket with red flowers and sat there quietly.
Since then, Pashka flew to Masha every day, pecked at the crumbs and wondered how to thank Masha. Once he brought her a frozen horned caterpillar - he found it on a tree in the park. But Masha did not eat the caterpillar, and Petrovna, cursing, threw the caterpillar out the window.
Then Pashka, to spite the old crow, began deftly stealing stolen things from the stall and bringing them back to Masha. Either he will bring in a dried marshmallow, or a petrified piece of pie, or a red piece of candy.
The crow must have stolen not only from Masha, but also from other houses, because Pashka sometimes made mistakes and took other people’s things: a comb, a playing card - the queen of clubs - and a golden feather from an “eternal” pen.
Pashka would fly into the room with these things, throw them on the floor, make several loops around the room and quickly, like a small fluffy projectile, disappear outside the window.
That evening Petrovna did not wake up for a long time. Masha was curious to see how the crow squeezed through the window. She had never seen this.
Masha climbed onto a chair, opened the window and hid behind the closet. First, large snow flew through the window and melted on the floor, and then suddenly something creaked. A crow climbed into the room, jumped onto my mother’s table, looked in the mirror, fluttered when I saw the same angry crow there, then croaked, stealthily grabbed a glass bouquet and flew out the window. Masha screamed. Petrovna woke up, groaned and cursed. And my mother, when she returned from the theater, cried for so long that Masha cried with her. And Petrovna said that there was no need to kill yourself, maybe there would be a glass bouquet - unless, of course, the stupid crow dropped it in the snow.
Pashka arrived in the morning. He sat down to rest on the fabulist Krylov, heard the story about the stolen bouquet, became ruffled and thought about it.
Then, when my mother went to a rehearsal at the theater, Pashka tagged along with her. He flew from signs to lampposts, from them to trees, until he reached the theater. There he sat for a while on the muzzle of the cast-iron horse, cleaned his beak, wiped away a tear with his paw, chirped and disappeared.
In the evening, mother put a festive white apron on Masha, and Petrovna threw a brown satin shawl over her shoulders, and everyone went to the theater together. And at that very hour, Pashka, on Chichkin’s orders, gathered all the sparrows that lived nearby, and the whole flock of sparrows attacked the crow stall where the glass bouquet was hidden.
The sparrows, of course, did not immediately decide to attack the stall, but settled on neighboring roofs and teased the crow for two hours. They thought she would get angry and fly out of the stall. Then it will be possible to arrange a fight on the street, where it is not as crowded as in a stall, and where everyone can fall on the crow at once. But the crow was a scientist, knew the sparrow’s tricks and did not leave the stall.
Then the sparrows finally gathered their courage and began to jump into the stall one after another. There was such a squeak, noise and fluttering that a crowd immediately gathered around the stall. A policeman came running. He looked into the stall and recoiled: sparrow fluff was flying all over the stall, and nothing could be made out in this fluff.
- Wow! - said the policeman. - This is hand-to-hand combat according to the regulations!
The policeman began to tear off the boards in order to open the boarded up door to the stall and stop the fight.
At this time, all the strings on the violins and cellos in the theater orchestra trembled quietly. The tall man waved his pale hand, slowly moved it, and under the growing thunder of the music, the heavy velvet curtain swayed, easily floated to the side, and Masha saw a large elegant room, flooded with the yellow sun, and rich freak sisters, and an evil stepmother, and her mother - thin and beautiful, in an old gray dress.
- Cinderella! - Masha quietly screamed and could no longer tear herself away from the stage.
There, in a blaze of blue, pink, gold and moonlight, a palace appeared. And my mother, running away from it, lost her glass slipper on the stairs. It was very good that the music all the time did nothing but grieve and rejoice for my mother, as if all these violins, oboes, flutes and trombones were living, kind creatures. They tried their best to help my mother together with the tall conductor. He was so busy helping Cinderella that he never even looked back at the audience.
And this is a great pity, because there were many children in the hall with their cheeks glowing with delight.
Even the old ushers, who never watch performances, but stand in the corridors at the doors with bundles of programs in their hands and large black binoculars - even these old ushers silently entered the hall, closed the doors behind their backs and looked at Masha’s mother. And one even wiped his eyes. And how could he not shed tears if the daughter of his deceased comrade, a conductor just like him, danced so well.
And so, when the performance ended and the music sang so loudly and cheerfully about happiness that people smiled to themselves and only wondered why the happy Cinderella had tears in her eyes - at that very time he burst into the auditorium, rushing and straying along the theater stairs , a small disheveled sparrow. It was immediately obvious that he had jumped out of a brutal fight.
He circled above the stage, blinded by hundreds of lights, and everyone noticed that in his beak there was something unbearably shiny, like a crystal twig.
The hall became noisy and fell silent. The conductor raised his hand and stopped the orchestra. In the back rows, people began to stand up to see what was happening on stage. The sparrow flew up to Cinderella. She stretched out her hands to him, and the sparrow in flight threw a small crystal bouquet into her palm. Cinderella pinned it to her dress with trembling fingers. The conductor waved his baton and the orchestra thundered. The theater lights trembled with applause. The sparrow flew under the dome of the hall, sat down on the chandelier and began to clean the feathers disheveled in the fight.
Cinderella bowed and laughed, and Masha, if she didn’t know for sure, would never have guessed that this Cinderella was her mother.
And then, in her house, when the lights were turned off and late night entered the room and ordered everyone to sleep, Masha asked her mother in her sleep:
- When you pinned the bouquet, did you think about dad?
“Yes,” my mother answered after a pause.
- Why are you crying?
- Because I’m glad that people like your dad exist in the world.
- That's not true! - Masha muttered. - They laugh with joy.
“They laugh from little joy,” my mother answered, “but from big joy they cry.” Now sleep!
Masha fell asleep. Petrovna also fell asleep. Mom went to the window. Pashka was sleeping on a branch outside the window. It was quiet in the world, and the heavy snow that fell and fell from the sky added to the silence. And my mother thought that just like snow, happy dreams and fairy tales fall on people.