“These cards aren’t yours,” said Petya, turning round.  “Natalya gave them me.”

“You are telling fibs, you are telling fibs, you horrid boy!” said Zaikin, growing more and more irritated.  “You are always telling fibs!  You want a whipping, you horrid little pig!  I will pull your ears!”

Petya leapt up, and craning his neck, stared fixedly at his father’s red and wrathful face.  His big eyes first began blinking, then were dimmed with moisture, and the boy’s face began working.

“But why are you scolding?” squealed Petya.  “Why do you attack me, you stupid?  I am not interfering with anybody; I am not naughty; I do what I am told, and yet . . . you are cross!  Why are you scolding me?”

The boy spoke with conviction, and wept so bitterly that Zaikin felt conscience-stricken.

“Yes, really, why am I falling foul of him?” he thought.  “Come, come,” he said, touching the boy on the shoulder.  “I am sorry, Petya . . . forgive me.  You are my good boy, my nice boy, I love you.”

Petya wiped his eyes with his sleeve, sat down, with a sigh, in the same place and began cutting out the queen.  Zaikin went off to his own room.  He stretched himself on the sofa, and putting his hands behind his head, sank into thought.  The boy’s tears had softened his anger, and by degrees the oppression on his liver grew less.  He felt nothing but exhaustion and hunger.

“Father,” he heard on the other side of the door, “shall I show you my collection of insects?”

“Yes, show me.”

Petya came into the study and handed his father a long green box.  Before raising it to his ear Zaikin could hear a despairing buzz and the scratching of claws on the sides of the box.  Opening the lid, he saw a number of butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers, and flies fastened to the bottom of the box with pins.  All except two or three butterflies were still alive and moving.

“Why, the grasshopper is still alive!” said Petya in surprise.  “I caught him yesterday morning, and he is still alive!”

“Who taught you to pin them in this way?”

“Olga Kirillovna.”

“Olga Kirillovna ought to be pinned down like that herself!” said Zaikin with repulsion.  “Take them away!  It’s shameful to torture animals.”

“My God!  How horribly he is being brought up!” he thought, as Petya went out.

Pavel Matveyitch forgot his exhaustion and hunger, and thought of nothing but his boy’s future.  Meanwhile, outside the light was gradually fading. . . .  He could hear the summer visitors trooping back from the evening bathe.  Some one was stopping near the open dining-room window and shouting:  “Do you want any mushrooms?” And getting no answer, shuffled on with bare feet. . . .  But at last, when the dusk was so thick that the outlines of the geraniums behind the muslin curtain were lost, and whiffs of the freshness of evening were coming in at the window, the door of the passage was thrown open noisily, and there came a sound of rapid footsteps, talk, and laughter. . . .