avoured to express,
both in face and figure, her extreme surprise at such strange behaviour
on the part of the Grandmother.

"How the woman sticks out her eyes at me! How she mows and minces!" was
the Grandmother's comment. Then she turned suddenly to the General, and
continued: "I have taken up my abode here, so am going to be your
next-door neighbour. Are you glad to hear that, or are you not?"

"My dear mother, believe me when I say that I am sincerely delighted,"
returned the General, who had now, to a certain extent, recovered his
senses; and inasmuch as, when occasion arose, he could speak with
fluency, gravity, and a certain effect, he set himself to be expansive
in his remarks, and went on: "We have been so dismayed and upset by the
news of your indisposition! We had received such hopeless telegrams
about you! Then suddenly--"

"Fibs, fibs!" interrupted the Grandmother.

"How on earth, too, did you come to decide upon the journey?" continued
the General, with raised voice as he hurried to overlook the old lady's
last remark. "Surely, at your age, and in your present state of health,
the thing is so unexpected that our surprise is at least intelligible.
However, I am glad to see you (as indeed, are we all"--he said this
with a dignified, yet conciliatory, smile), "and will use my best
endeavours to render your stay here as pleasant as possible."

"Enough! All this is empty chatter. You are talking the usual nonsense.
I shall know quite well how to spend my time. How did I come to
undertake the journey, you ask? Well, is there anything so very
surprising about it? It was done quite simply. What is every one going
into ecstasies about?--How do you do, Prascovia? What are YOU doing
here?"

"And how are YOU, Grandmother?" replied Polina, as she approached the
old lady. "Were you long on the journey?".

"The most sensible question that I have yet been asked! Well, you shall
hear for yourself how it all happened. I lay and lay, and was doctored
and doctored, until at last I drove the physicians from me, and called
in an apothecary from Nicolai who had cured an old woman of a malady
similar to my own--cured her merely with a little hayseed. Well, he did
me a great deal of good, for on the third day I broke into a sweat, and
was able to leave my bed. Then my German doctors held another
consultation, put on their spectacles, and told me that if I would go
abroad, and take a course of the waters, the indisposition