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The Forester's Wife
the forester's wife
also: лесничиха, баба
A woman living in an isolated cottage in the crown forest who takes in the exhausted, weeping Anyutka, feeds her, and gains her trust -- then, once her husband and his companions arrive and reveal they have just killed a man for money they never found, produces the very bundle Anyutka gave her for safekeeping, precipitating the robbers' plan to murder the child.
Reading notes
- An Incident (A Coachman's Tale) §38 a woman's eye is sharp-sighted, like a hawk's
The narrator's aside explains why Anyutka's disguise (swapping her jacket for the sleeping girl's, and covering her head) succeeds only because the forester's wife happens to be out fetching more vodka at that exact moment; had the mother been present, the narrator implies, her sharper attention would very likely have caught the substitution before Anyutka could slip past the drunk men and out of the cottage.