Night. Nanny Varka, a girl of about thirteen, shakes her cradle and sings a lullaby. The child cries and does not fall asleep, Varka wants to sleep, but if she falls asleep, the owners will beat her. She dreams of people walking along the road, and then they fall and fall asleep. After she sees her late father. He had a hernia, and he tossed and turned on the floor in pain. The young doctor looked at him and sent him to the hospital on a cart sent by the owners. The hernia was corrected, but in the morning he died. Varka goes, crying, into the forest, but receives a blow to the back of her head, beats her forehead against a birch and wakes up. This master hit her as she sleeps and the baby cries. She shakes the cradle again, and she dreams about how she and her mother go to work in the city and beg for alms along the way. The hostess wakes her up immediately and demands a child, feeds him and gives him back to Varka. She puts the baby in the cradle, shakes her, falling asleep, but she is told to cook the stove.

She wakes up and at work the dream passes a little. They tell her to put a samovar, to clean the owner galoshes, over which she again almost falls asleep. Then you need to go to the store, and many more things to do. The most painful thing is to stand above the table and peel potatoes, serve at dinner, wash, sew; the head itself tends to the table and wants to sleep. In the evening, Varka runs to the store for beer, vodka, cleans the herring, the last order: to shake the child. Varka shakes the cradle and again sees people on the road, father, mother. She can’t understand what is holding her hands and feet, prevents her from living. The child looks around and understands this. How did she not immediately guess? A false representation takes possession of Varka. Smiling, not blinking, she goes to the cradle, strangles the child, lies on the floor, laughs with joy and after a minute sleeps soundly, as if dead.