rried away by his subject, and no longer thought of my
sister, nor of his grief, nor of me. Life was of absorbing interest
to him. She has America and her ring with the inscription on it, I
thought, while this fellow has his doctor's degree and a professor's
chair to look forward to, and only my sister and I are left with
the old things.

When I said good-bye to him, I went up to the lamp-post and read
the letter once more. And I remembered, I remembered vividly how
that spring morning she had come to me at the mill, lain down and
covered herself with her jacket--she wanted to be like a simple
peasant woman. And how, another time--it was in the morning also
--we drew the net out of the water, and heavy drops of rain fell
upon us from the riverside willows, and we laughed.

It was dark in our house in Great Dvoryansky Street. I got over the
fence and, as I used to do in the old days, went by the back way
to the kitchen to borrow a lantern. There was no one in the kitchen.
The samovar hissed near the stove, waiting for my father. "Who pours
out my father's tea now?" I thought. Taking the lantern I went out
to the shed, built myself up a bed of old newspapers and lay down.
The hooks on the walls looked forbidding, as they used to of old,
and their shadows flickered. It was cold. I felt that my sister
would come in in a minute, and bring me supper, but at once I
remembered that she was ill and was lying at Radish's, and it seemed
to me strange that I should have climbed over the fence and be lying
here in this unheated shed. My mind was in a maze, and I saw all
sorts of absurd things.

There was a ring. A ring familiar from childhood: first the wire
rustled against the wall, then a short plaintive ring in the kitchen.
It was my father come back from the club. I got up and went into
the kitchen. Axinya the cook clasped her hands on seeing me, and
for some reason burst into tears.

"My own!" she said softly. "My precious! O Lord!"

And she began crumpling up her apron in her agitation. In the window
there were standing jars of berries in vodka. I poured myself out
a teacupful and greedily drank it off, for I was intensely thirsty.
Axinya had quite recently scrubbed the table and benches, and there
was that smell in the kitchen which is found in bright, snug kitchens
kept by tidy cooks. And that smell and the chirp of the cricket
used to lure us as children into the kitchen, and put us in the
mood for hearing fairy tale