lf.

"Olya, we are going indoors," Pyotr Dmitritch called from the
raspberries.

Olga Mihalovna liked being silent, waiting and watching Varvara.
She would have been ready to stay like that till night without
speaking or having any duty to perform. But she had to go. She had
hardly left the cottage when Lubotchka, Nata, and Vata came running
to meet her. The sisters stopped short abruptly a couple of yards
away; Lubotchka ran right up to her and flung herself on her neck.

"You dear, darling, precious," she said, kissing her face and her
neck. "Let us go and have tea on the island!"

"On the island, on the island!" said the precisely similar Nata and
Vata, both at once, without a smile.

"But it's going to rain, my dears."

"It's not, it's not," cried Lubotchka with a woebegone face. "They've
all agreed to go. Dear! darling!"

"They are all getting ready to have tea on the island," said Pyotr
Dmitritch, coming up. "See to arranging things. . . . We will all
go in the boats, and the samovars and all the rest of it must be
sent in the carriage with the servants."

He walked beside his wife and gave her his arm. Olga Mihalovna had
a desire to say something disagreeable to her husband, something
biting, even about her dowry perhaps--the crueller the better,
she felt. She thought a little, and said:

"Why is it Count Alexey Petrovitch hasn't come? What a pity!"

"I am very glad he hasn't come," said Pyotr Dmitritch, lying. "I'm
sick to death of that old lunatic."

"But yet before dinner you were expecting him so eagerly!"

III

Half an hour later all the guests were crowding on the bank near
the pile to which the boats were fastened. They were all talking
and laughing, and were in such excitement and commotion that they
could hardly get into the boats. Three boats were crammed with
passengers, while two stood empty. The keys for unfastening these
two boats had been somehow mislaid, and messengers were continually
running from the river to the house to look for them. Some said
Grigory had the keys, others that the bailiff had them, while others
suggested sending for a blacksmith and breaking the padlocks. And
all talked at once, interrupting and shouting one another down.
Pyotr Dmitritch paced impatiently to and fro on the bank, shouting:

"What the devil's the meaning of it! The keys ought always to be
lying in the hall window! Who has dared to take them away? The
bailiff can get a boat of his own if he wa