“How big?  Like this?”

“Rather small, but a fine thing.”

“A book.”

“No, a thing.  Run along, run along, Vassily Lukitch is calling you,” said the porter, hearing the tutor’s steps approaching, and carefully taking away from his belt the little hand in the glove half pulled off, he signed with his head towards the tutor.

“Vassily Lukitch, in a tiny minute!” answered Seryozha with that gay and loving smile which always won over the conscientious Vassily Lukitch.

Seryozha was too happy, everything was too delightful for him to be able to help sharing with his friend the porter the family good fortune of which he had heard during his walk in the public gardens from Lidia Ivanovna’s niece.  This piece of good news seemed to him particularly important from its coming at the same time with the gladness of the bandaged clerk and his own gladness at toys having come for him.  It seemed to Seryozha that this was a day on which everyone ought to be glad and happy.

“You know papa’s received the Alexander Nevsky today?”

“To be sure I do!  People have been already to congratulate him.”

“And is he glad?”

“Glad at the Tsar’s gracious favor!  I should think so!  It’s a proof he’s deserved it,” said the porter severely and seriously.

Seryozha fell to dreaming, gazing up at the face of the porter, which he had thoroughly studied in every detail, especially the chin that hung down between the gray whiskers, never seen by anyone but Seryozha, who saw him only from below.

“Well, and has your daughter been to see you lately?”

The porter’s daughter was a ballet dancer.

“When is she to come on week-days?  They’ve their lessons to learn too.  And you’ve your lesson, sir; run along.”

On coming into the room, Seryozha, instead of sitting down to his lessons, told his tutor of his supposition that what had been brought him must be a machine.  “What do you think?” he inquired.

But Vassily Lukitch was thinking of nothing but the necessity of learning the grammar lesson for the teacher, who was coming at two.

“No, do just tell me, Vassily Lukitch,” he asked suddenly, when he was seated at their work table with the book in his hands, “what is greater than the Alexander Nevsky?  You know papa’s received the Alexander Nevsky?”

Vassily Lukitch replied that the Vladimir was greater than the Alexander Nevsky.

“And higher still?”

“Well, highest of all is the Andrey Pervozvanny.”

“And higher than the Andrey?”

“I don’t know.”

“What, you don’t know?” and Seryozha, leaning on his elbows, sank into deep meditation.

His meditations were of the most complex and diverse character.  He 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.