favourite toy—­a china dog or hare—­stuck into the bed-corner behind the pillow, and it would please me to think how warm and comfortable and well cared-for it was there.  Also, I would pray God to make every one happy, so that every one might be contented, and also to send fine weather to-morrow for our walk.  Then I would turn myself over on to the other side, and thoughts and dreams would become jumbled and entangled together until at last I slept soundly and peacefully, though with a face wet with tears.

Do in after life the freshness and light-heartedness, the craving for love and for strength of faith, ever return which we experience in our childhood’s years?  What better time is there in our lives than when the two best of virtues—­innocent gaiety and a boundless yearning for affection—­are our sole objects of pursuit?

Where now are our ardent prayers?  Where now are our best gifts—­the pure tears of emotion which a guardian angel dries with a smile as he sheds upon us lovely dreams of ineffable childish joy?  Can it be that life has left such heavy traces upon one’s heart that those tears and ecstasies are for ever vanished?  Can it be that there remains to us only the recollection of them?

XVI —­ VERSE-MAKING

Rather less than a month after our arrival in Moscow I was sitting upstairs in my Grandmamma’s house and doing some writing at a large table.  Opposite to me sat the drawing master, who was giving a few finishing touches to the head of a turbaned Turk, executed in black pencil.  Woloda, with out-stretched neck, was standing behind the drawing master and looking over his shoulder.  The head was Woloda’s first production in pencil and to-day—­Grandmamma’s name-day—­the masterpiece was to be presented to her.

“Aren’t you going to put a little more shadow there?” said Woloda to the master as he raised himself on tiptoe and pointed to the Turk’s neck.

“No, it is not necessary,” the master replied as he put pencil and drawing-pen into a japanned folding box.  “It is just right now, and you need not do anything more to it.  As for you, Nicolinka,” he added, rising and glancing askew at the Turk, “won’t you tell us your great secret at last?  What are you going to give your Grandmamma?  I think another head would be your best gift.  But good-bye, gentlemen,” and taking his hat and cardboard he departed.

I too had thought that another head than the one at which I had been working would be a better gift; so, when we were told that Grandmamma’s name-day was soon to come round and that we must each of us have a present ready for her, I had taken it into my head to write some verses in honour of the occasion, and had forthwith composed two rhymed couplets, hoping that the rest would soon materialise.  I really do not know how the idea—­one so peculiar for a child—­came to occur to me, but I know that I liked it vastly, and answered all questions on the subject of my gift by declaring that I should soon have something ready for Grandmamma, but was not going to say what it was.