My Pretty Sweetheart (Arianna) novel Chapter 1391

Bobbie led us into the house. I was stunned as soon as I entered the house. In the twenty square meters house, seven or eight children and a thin woman were huddled around a coal stove. There was a boiling pot on the stove.

The 15-watt incandescent lamp was too dim and I could barely see what was boiling in the pot. It seemed to be a pot full of cabbage with a few pieces of fatty meat.

When the children saw us coming, they all straightened up at once, and then stood by the wall, giving us their seats.

Bobbie was probably used to this. He looked at the children and said a few words in another dialect, but I couldn't understand anything he said at all. Then he sat down next to the stove and put his hands near the fire to keep warm. He placed his large feet against the stove, occupying more than half of it.

The man glanced at the woman, and then she stood up, looked at me and said awkwardly, "You come and sit here. It's warmer here."

I looked at her and quickly rejected her offer, but she still got up immediately. Then, she looked toward the children and said a few words to them. Upon hearing that, the children gathered around the small wooden table on the other side of the room. Then, the woman took out some vegetables from the pot and placed them on a chipped plate in the middle of the table. Among the few children, the youngest looked about three or four years old, and the eldest one was about ten years old. They picked up their bowls, which were filled with corn rice and started eating at the table.