delight in his manly bravery and fortitude. This was how it was.
Ilinka was the son of a poor foreigner who had been under certain
obligations to my Grandpapa, and now thought it incumbent upon him to
send his son to us as frequently as possible. Yet if he thought that the
acquaintance would procure his son any advancement or pleasure, he was
entirely mistaken, for not only were we anything but friendly to Ilinka,
but it was seldom that we noticed him at all except to laugh at him. He
was a boy of thirteen, tall and thin, with a pale, birdlike face, and
a quiet, good-tempered expression. Though poorly dressed, he always had
his head so thickly pomaded that we used to declare that on warm days
it melted and ran down his neck. When I think of him now, it seems to
me that he was a very quiet, obliging, and good-tempered boy, but at
the time I thought him a creature so contemptible that he was not worth
either attention or pity.
Upstairs we set ourselves to astonish each other with gymnastic tours de
force. Ilinka watched us with a faint smile of admiration, but refused
an invitation to attempt a similar feat, saying that he had no strength.
Seriosha was extremely captivating. His face and eyes glowed with
laughter as he surprised us with tricks which we had never seen before.
He jumped over three chairs put together, turned somersaults right
across the room, and finally stood on his head on a pyramid of
Tatistchev's dictionaries, moving his legs about with such comical
rapidity that it was impossible not to help bursting with merriment.
After this last trick he pondered for a moment (blinking his eyes as
usual), and then went up to Ilinka with a very serious face.
'Try and do that,' he said. 'It is not really difficult.'
Ilinka, observing that the general attention was fixed upon him,
blushed, and said in an almost inaudible voice that he could not do the
feat.
'Well, what does he mean by doing nothing at all? What a girl the fellow
is! He has just GOT to stand on his head,' and Seriosha, took him by the
hand.
'Yes, on your head at once! This instant, this instant!' every one
shouted as we ran upon Ilinka and dragged him to the dictionaries,
despite his being visibly pale and frightened.
'Leave me alone! You are tearing my jacket!' cried the unhappy victim,
but his exclamations of despair only encouraged us the more. We were
dying with laughter, while the green jacket was bursting at every seam.
Woloda and the eldest Iwin took his head and placed it on the
dictionaries, while Seriosha, and I seized his poor, thin legs (his
struggles had stripped them upwards to the knees), and with boisterous,
laughter held them uptight--the youngest Iwin superintending his general
equilibrium.
Suddenly a moment of silence occurred amid our boisterous laughter-- a
moment during which nothing was to be heard in the room but the panting
of the miserable Ilinka. It occurred to me at that moment that, after
all, there was nothing so very comical and pleasant in all this.
'Now, THAT'S a boy!' cried Seriosha, giving Ilinka a smack with his
hand. Ilinka said nothing, but made such desperate movements with his
legs to free himself that his foot suddenly kicked Seriosha in the
eye: with the result that, letting go of Ilinka's leg and covering the
wounded member with one hand, Seriosha hit out at him with all his might
with the other one. Of course Ilinka's legs slipped down as, sinking
exhausted to the floor and half-suffocated with tears, he stammered out:
'Why should you bully me so?'
The poor fellow's miserable figure, with its streaming tears, ruffled
hair, and crumpled trousers revealing dirty boots, touched us a little,
and we stood silent and trying to smile.
Seriosha was the first to recover himself.
'What a girl! What a gaby!' he said, giving Ilinka a slight kick. 'He
