the leaves of the trees above us, and, breathing softly upon my hair and
heated face, refreshed me beyond measure. When we had finished the
fruit and ices, nothing remained to be done around the empty cloth, so,
despite the oblique, scorching rays of the sun, we rose and proceeded to
play.
'Well, what shall it be?' said Lubotshka, blinking in the sunlight and
skipping about the grass, 'Suppose we play Robinson?'
'No, that's a tiresome game,' objected Woloda, stretching himself lazily
on the turf and gnawing some leaves, 'Always Robinson! If you want to
play at something, play at building a summerhouse.'
Woloda was giving himself tremendous airs. Probably he was proud of
having ridden the hunter, and so pretended to be very tired. Perhaps,
also, he had too much hard-headedness and too little imagination
fully to enjoy the game of Robinson. It was a game which consisted of
performing various scenes from The Swiss Family Robinson, a book which
we had recently been reading.
'Well, but be a good boy. Why not try and please us this time?' the
girls answered. 'You may be Charles or Ernest or the father, whichever
you like best,' added Katenka as she tried to raise him from the ground
by pulling at his sleeve.
'No, I'm not going to; it's a tiresome game,' said Woloda again, though
smiling as if secretly pleased.
'It would be better to sit at home than not to play at ANYTHING,'
murmured Lubotshka, with tears in her eyes. She was a great weeper.
'Well, go on, then. Only, DON'T cry; I can't stand that sort of thing.'
Woloda's condescension did not please us much. On the contrary, his
lazy, tired expression took away all the fun of the game. When we sat
on the ground and imagined that we were sitting in a boat and either
fishing or rowing with all our might, Woloda persisted in sitting with
folded hands or in anything but a fisherman's posture. I made a remark
about it, but he replied that, whether we moved our hands or not, we
should neither gain nor lose ground--certainly not advance at all, and I
was forced to agree with him. Again, when I pretended to go out hunting,
and, with a stick over my shoulder, set off into the wood, Woloda only
lay down on his back with his hands under his head, and said that he
supposed it was all the same whether he went or not. Such behaviour and
speeches cooled our ardour for the game and were very disagreeable--the
more so since it was impossible not to confess to oneself that Woloda
was right, I myself knew that it was not only impossible to kill birds
with a stick, but to shoot at all with such a weapon. Still, it was
the game, and if we were once to begin reasoning thus, it would become
equally impossible for us to go for drives on chairs. I think that even
Woloda himself cannot at that moment have forgotten how, in the long
winter evenings, we had been used to cover an arm-chair with a shawl
and make a carriage of it--one of us being the coachman, another one the
footman, the two girls the passengers, and three other chairs the trio
of horses abreast. With what ceremony we used to set out, and with what
adventures we used to meet on the way! How gaily and quickly those long
winter evenings used to pass! If we were always to judge from reality,
games would be nonsense; but if games were nonsense, what else would
there be left to do?
IX -- A FIRST ESSAY IN LOVE
PRETENDING to gather some 'American fruit' from a tree, Lubotshka
suddenly plucked a leaf upon which was a huge caterpillar, and throwing
the insect with horror to the ground, lifted her hands and sprang away
as though afraid it would spit at her. The game stopped, and we crowded
