id Nicholas with some unintentional
superciliousness, as if ashamed to confess that the sounds pleased him
very much.

"Very good?" said Natasha reproachfully, noticing her brother's tone.
"Not 'very good' it's simply delicious!"

Just as "Uncle's" pickled mushrooms, honey, and cherry brandy had seemed
to her the best in the world, so also that song, at that moment, seemed
to her the acme of musical delight.

"More, please, more!" cried Natasha at the door as soon as the balalayka
ceased. Mitka tuned up afresh, and recommenced thrumming the balalayka
to the air of My Lady, with trills and variations. "Uncle" sat
listening, slightly smiling, with his head on one side. The air was
repeated a hundred times. The balalayka was retuned several times and
the same notes were thrummed again, but the listeners did not grow weary
of it and wished to hear it again and again. Anisya Fedorovna came in
and leaned her portly person against the doorpost.

"You like listening?" she said to Natasha, with a smile extremely like
"Uncle's." "That's a good player of ours," she added.

"He doesn't play that part right!" said "Uncle" suddenly, with an
energetic gesture. "Here he ought to burst out--that's it, come
on!--ought to burst out."

"Do you play then?" asked Natasha.

"Uncle" did not answer, but smiled.

"Anisya, go and see if the strings of my guitar are all right. I haven't
touched it for a long time. That's it--come on! I've given it up."

Anisya Fedorovna, with her light step, willingly went to fulfill her
errand and brought back the guitar.

Without looking at anyone, "Uncle" blew the dust off it and, tapping the
case with his bony fingers, tuned the guitar and settled himself in his
armchair. He took the guitar a little above the fingerboard, arching
his left elbow with a somewhat theatrical gesture, and, with a wink at
Anisya Fedorovna, struck a single chord, pure and sonorous, and then
quietly, smoothly, and confidently began playing in very slow time, not
My Lady, but the well-known song: Came a maiden down the street. The
tune, played with precision and in exact time, began to thrill in the
hearts of Nicholas and Natasha, arousing in them the same kind of sober
mirth as radiated from Anisya Fedorovna's whole being. Anisya Fedorovna
flushed, and drawing her kerchief over her face went laughing out of
the room. "Uncle" continued to play correctly, carefully, with energetic
firmness, looking with a changed and inspire