A Night by Vsevolod Garshin

Do you remember yourself as a little child when you lived with your father in a faraway forgotten village? He was an unhappy man, your father, but he loved you more than all else in the world. Do you remember how you would sit together in the long winter evenings, he busy with accounts, you with your books, the tallow-dipped candle with its reddish flame burning more and more dimly, until, arming yourself with snuffers, you trimmed it? That was your duty, and you performed it with such importance that your father each time would raise his eyes from the big ledger, and with customary pathetic and caressing smile, look at you. Your eyes would meet.

"Look, papa, how much I have already read," you would say, and show the pages you had read, holding them together with your fingers.