Faraway Christmas Eve. Frosty day. From the windows you can see how the white fluffy snow covered streets, rooftops and trees. Early dusk. The sky is blue.
We're at the Lida window and look at the sky.
- Nurse, will soon be a star? - I ask.
- Soon, soon - hastily meets an old woman. It sets the table.
- Baby sitting, look, there's already a star in the sky came - happily said Lida.
- It's not the same.
- Why not that? Look carefully.
- That will be more ... This is very small - the nurse said, barely glancing at the window.
- You said before the first stars - tearfully says sister.
- Because we were hungry. Very hungry - I say.
- Wait ... detushki Now it is coming soon ... Patient.

Vanka Zhukov, a boy of nine, given away three months ago, apprenticed to a shoemaker Alyahinu, on the night before Christmas did not go to sleep. Having waited until the owners and apprentices went to matins, he took out of the master's cupboard a bottle of ink, a pen with a rusty pen and, in front of him a crumpled piece of paper, he began to write. Before you take the first letter, several times he looked anxiously at the door and the window, looked at the dark image on both sides of which stretched shelves of shoes, and shaky breath. Paper lay on the bench, and he stood before the bench in his lap.