But when he noticed on the wrinkled face her black eyes, which beamed so tenderly on him, he at once pressed his head close to her knees in confidence.
"My sickly little orphan!" she said in a velvet-like voice that trembled from the fulness of sound, and quietly patted his face with her hand, "stay close to me, my dear child!" There was something particularly sweet and soft in her caresses, something altogether new to Foma, and he stared into the old woman's eyes with curiosity and expectation on his face.

This old woman led him into a new world, hitherto unknown to him.

The very first day, having put him to bed, she seated herself by his side, and, bending over the child, asked him: "Shall I tell you a story, Fomushka ?" And after that Foma always fell asleep amid the velvet-like sounds of the old woman's voice, which painted before him a magic life.

Giants defeating monsters, wise princesses, fools who turned out to be wise--troops of new and wonderful people were passing before the boy's bewitched imagination, and his soul was nourished by the wholesome beauty of the national creative power.

Inexhaustible were the treasures of the memory and the fantasy of this old woman, who oftentimes, in slumber, appeared to the boy--now like the witch of the fairy-tales--only a kind and amiable old witch--now like the beautiful, all-wise Vasilisa.