mysterious. And the two elder girls, Katya and Sonya, began to keep a sharp look-out on the boys. At night, when the boys had gone to bed, the girls crept to their bedroom door, and listened to what they were saying. Ah, what they discovered! The boys were planning to run away to America to dig for gold: they had everything ready for the journey, a pistol, two knives, biscuits, a burning glass to serve instead of matches, a compass, and four roubles in cash. They learned that the boys would have to walk some thousands of miles, and would have to fight tigers and savages on the road: then they would get gold and ivory, slay their enemies, become pirates, drink gin, and finally marry beautiful maidens, and make a plantation.
The boys interrupted each other in their excitement. Throughout the conversation, Lentilov called himself 'Montehomo, the Hawk's Claw,' and Volodya was 'my pale-face brother!'
'Mind you don't tell mamma,' said Katya, as they went back to bed. 'Volodya will bring us gold and ivory from America, but if you tell mamma he won't be allowed to go.'
The day before Christmas Eve, Lentilov spent the whole day poring over the map of Asia and making notes, while Volodya, with a languid and swollen face that looked as though it had been stung by a bee, walked about the rooms and ate nothing. And once he stood still before the holy image in the nursery, crossed himself, and said:
'Lord, forgive me a sinner; Lord, have pity on my poor unhappy mamma!'
In the evening he burst out crying. On saying good-night he gave his father a long hug, and then hugged his mother and sisters. Katya and Sonya knew what was the matter, but little Masha was puzzled, completely puzzled. Every time she looked at Lentilov she grew thoughtful and said with a sigh:
'When Lent comes, nurse says we shall have to eat peas and lentils.'
Early in the morning of Christmas Eve, Katya and Sonya slipped quietly out of bed, and went to find out how the boys meant to run away to America. They crept to their door.
'Then you don't mean to go?' Lentilov was saying angrily. 'Speak out: aren't you going?'
'Oh dear,' Volodya wept softly. 'How can I go? I feel so unhappy about mamma.'
'My pale-face brother, I pray you, let us set off. You declared you were going, you egged me on, and now the time comes, you funk it!'
'I . . . I . . . I'm not funking it, but I . . . I . . . I'm sorry for mamma.'
'Say once and for all, are you going or are you not?'
'I am going, only . . . wait a little . . . I want to be at home a little.'
'In that case I will go by myself,' Lentilov declared. 'I can get on without you. And you wanted to hunt tigers and fight! Since that's how it is, give me back my cartridges!'
At this Volodya cried so bitterly that his sisters could not help crying too. Silence followed.
'So you are not coming?' Lentilov began again.
'I . . . I . . . I am coming!'
'Well, put on your things, then.'
And Lentilov tried to cheer Volodya up by singing the praises of America, growling like a tiger, pretending to be a steamer, scolding him, and promising to give him all the ivory and lions' and tigers' skins.
And this thin, dark boy, with his freckles and his bristling shock of hair, impressed the little girls as an extraordinary remarkable person. He was a hero, a determined character, who knew no fear, and he growled so ferociously, that, standing at the door, they really might imagine there was a tiger or lion inside. When the little girls went back to their room and dressed, Katya's eyes were full of tears, and she said:
'Oh, I feel so frightened!'
Everything was as usual till two o'clock, when they sat down to dinner. Then it appeared that the boys were not in the house. They sent to the servants' quarters, to the stables, to the bailiff's cottage. They were not to be found. They sent into the village— they were not there.
At tea, too, the boys were still absent, and by supper-time Volodya's mother was dreadfully uneasy, and even shed tears.
Late in the evening they sent again to the village, they searched everywhere, and walked along the river bank with lanterns. Heavens! what a fuss there was!
Next day the police officer came, and a paper of some sort was written out in the dining-room. Their mother cried. . . .
All of a sudden a sledge stopped at the door, with three white horses in a cloud of steam.
'Volodya's come,' someone shouted in the yard.
'Master Volodya's here!' bawled Natalya, running into the dining-room.
And Milord barked his deep bass, 'bow-wow.'
It seemed that the boys had been stopped in the Arcade, where they had gone from shop to shop asking where they could get gunpowder.
Volodya burst into sobs as soon as he came into the hall, and flung himself on his mother's neck. The little girls, trembling, wondered with terror what would happen next. They saw their father take Volodya and Lentilov into his study, and there he talked to them a long while.
'Is this a proper thing to do?' their father said to them. 'I only pray they won't hear of it at school, you would both be expelled. You ought to be ashamed, Mr. Lentilov, really. It's not at all the thing to do! You began it, and I hope you will be punished by your parents. How could you? Where did you spend the night?'
'At the station,' Lentilov answered proudly.
Then Volodya went to bed, and had a compress, steeped in vinegar, on his forehead.
A telegram was sent off, and next day a lady, Lentilov's mother, made her appearance and bore off her son.
Lentilov looked morose and haughty to the end, and he did not utter
a single word at taking leave of the little girls. But he took
Katya's book and wrote in it as a souvenir: 'Montehomo, the Hawk's
Claw, Chief of the Ever Victorious.'
SHROVE TUESDAY
'PAVEL VASSILITCH!' cries Pelageya Ivanovna, waking her husband. 'Pavel Vassilitch! You might go and help Styopa with his lessons, he is sitting crying over his book. He can't understand something again!'
Pavel Vassilitch gets up, makes the sign of the cross over his mouth as he yawns, and says softly: 'In a minute, my love!'
The cat who has been asleep beside him gets up too, straightens out its tail, arches its spine, and half-shuts its eyes. There is stillness. . . . Mice can be heard scurrying behind the wall-paper. Putting on his boots and his dressing-gown, Pavel Vassilitch, crumpled and frowning from sleepiness, comes out of his bedroom into the dining- room; on his entrance another cat, engaged in sniffing a marinade of fish in the window, jumps down to the floor, and hides behind the cupboard.
'Who asked you to sniff that!' he says angrily, covering the fish with a sheet of newspaper. 'You are a pig to do that, not a cat. . . .'
From the dining-room there is a door leading into the nursery. There, at a table covered with stains and deep scratches, sits Styopa, a high-school boy in the second class, with a peevish expression of face and tear-stained eyes. With his knees raised almost to his chin, and his hands clasped round them, he is swaying to and fro like a Chinese idol and looking crossly at a sum book.
'Are you working?' asks Pavel Vassilitch, sitting down to the table and yawning. 'Yes, my boy. . . . We have enjoyed ourselves, slept, and eaten pancakes, and to-morrow comes Lenten fare, repentance, and going to work. Every period of time has its limits. Why are your eyes so red? Are you sick of learning your lessons? To be sure, after pancakes, lessons are nasty to swallow. That's about it.'
'What are you laughing at the child for?' Pelageya Ivanovna calls from the next room. 'You had better show him instead of laughing at him. He'll get a one again to-morrow, and make me miserable.'
