“Yes, my dear little rat!” he said, and he laughed.

He was lying in an uncomfortable position.  He put his arms under his head and put his left leg over the back of the sofa.  He felt more comfortable.  Meanwhile a pale light was more and more perceptible at the windows, sleepy cocks crowed in the yard.  Nikitin went on thinking how he would come back from Petersburg, how Masha would meet him at the station, and with a shriek of delight would fling herself on his neck; or, better still, he would cheat her and come home by stealth late at night:  the cook would open the door, then he would go on tiptoe to the bedroom, undress noiselessly, and jump into bed!  And she would wake up and be overjoyed.

It was beginning to get quite light.  By now there were no windows, no study.  On the steps of the brewery by which they had ridden that day Masha was sitting, saying something.  Then she took Nikitin by the arm and went with him to the suburban garden.  There he saw the oaks and, the crows’ nests like hats.  One of the nests rocked; out of it peeped Shebaldin, shouting loudly:  “You have not read Lessing!”

Nikitin shuddered all over and opened his eyes.  Ippolit Ippolititch was standing before the sofa, and throwing back his head, was putting on his cravat.

“Get up; it’s time for school,” he said.  “You shouldn’t sleep in your clothes; it spoils your clothes.  You should sleep in your bed, undressed.”

And as usual he began slowly and emphatically saying what everybody knew.

Nikitin’s first lesson was on Russian language in the second class.  When at nine o’clock punctually he went into the classroom, he saw written on the blackboard two large letters—­M.  S. That, no doubt, meant Masha Shelestov.

“They’ve scented it out already, the rascals . . .” thought Nikitin.  “How is it they know everything?”

The second lesson was in the fifth class.  And there two letters, M.  S., were written on the blackboard; and when he went out of the classroom at the end of the lesson, he heard the shout behind him as though from a theatre gallery: 

“Hurrah for Masha Shelestov!”

His head was heavy from sleeping in his clothes, his limbs were weighted down with inertia.  The boys, who were expecting every day to break up before the examinations, did nothing, were restless, and so bored that they got into mischief.  Nikitin, too, was restless, did not notice their pranks, and was continually going to the window.  He could see the street brilliantly lighted up with the sun; above the houses the blue limpid sky, the birds, and far, far away, beyond the gardens and the houses, vast indefinite distance, the forests in the blue haze, the smoke from a passing train. . . .

Here two officers in white tunics, playing with their whips, passed in the street in the shade of the acacias.  Here a lot of Jews, with grey beards, and caps on, drove past in a waggonette. . . .  The governess walked by with the director’s granddaughter.  Som ran by in the company of two other dogs. . . .  And then Varya, wearing a simple grey dress and red stockings, carrying the “Vyestnik Evropi” in her hand, passed by.  She must have been to the town library. . . .