e imagined his father's having suddenly been presented with both
the Vladimir and the Andrey today, and in consequence being much
better tempered at his lesson, and dreamed how, when he was grown
up, he would himself receive all the orders, and what they might
invent higher than the Andrey. Directly any higher order were
invented, he would win it. They would make a higher one still,
and he would immediately win that too.

The time passed in such meditations, and when the teacher came,
the lesson about the adverbs of place and time and manner of
action was not ready, and the teacher was not only displeased,
but hurt. This touched Seryozha. He felt he was not to blame
for not having learned the lesson; however much he tried, he was
utterly unable to do that. As long as the teacher was explaining
to him, he believed him and seemed to comprehend, but as soon as
he was left alone, he was positively unable to recollect and to
understand that the short and familiar word "suddenly" is an
adverb of manner of action. Still he was sorry that he had
disappointed the teacher.

He chose a moment when the teacher was looking in silence at the
book.

"Mihail Ivanitch, when is your birthday?" he asked all, of a
sudden.

"You'd much better be thinking about your work. Birthdays are of
no importance to a rational being. It's a day like any other on
which one has to do one's work."

Seryozha looked intently at the teacher, at his scanty beard, at
his spectacles, which had slipped down below the ridge on his
nose, and fell into so deep a reverie that he heard nothing of
what the teacher was explaining to him. He knew that the teacher
did not think what he said; he felt it from the tone in which it
was said. "But why have they all agreed to speak just in the
same manner always the dreariest and most useless stuff? Why
does he keep me off; why doesn't he love me?" he asked himself
mournfully, and could not think of an answer.

Chapter 27

After the lesson with the grammar teacher came his father's
lesson. While waiting for his father, Seryozha sat at the table
playing with a penknife, and fell to dreaming. Among Seryozha's
favorite occupations was searching for his mother during his
walks. He did not believe in death generally, and in her death
in particular, in spite of what Lidia Ivanovna had told him and
his father had confirmed, and it was just because of that, and
after he had been told she was dead, that