From above us, from every side, came the happy songs of little birds calling to one another among the dripping brushwood, while clear from the inmost depths of the wood sounded the voice of the cuckoo.  So delicious was the wondrous scent of the wood, the scent which follows a thunderstorm in spring, the scent of birch-trees, violets, mushrooms, and thyme, that I could no longer remain in the britchka.  Jumping out, I ran to some bushes, and, regardless of the showers of drops discharged upon me, tore off a few sprigs of thyme, and buried my face in them to smell their glorious scent.

Then, despite the mud which had got into my boots, as also the fact that my stockings were soaked, I went skipping through the puddles to the window of the carriage.

“Lubotshka!  Katenka!” I shouted as I handed them some of the thyme, “Just look how delicious this is!”

The girls smelt it and cried, “A-ah!” but Mimi shrieked to me to go away, for fear I should be run over by the wheels.

“Oh, but smell how delicious it is!” I persisted.

III.  A NEW POINT OF VIEW

Katenka was with me in the britchka; her lovely head inclined as she gazed pensively at the roadway.  I looked at her in silence and wondered what had brought the unchildlike expression of sadness to her face which I now observed for the first time there.

“We shall soon be in Moscow,” I said at last.  “How large do you suppose it is?”

“I don’t know,” she replied.

“Well, but how large do you imagine?  As large as Serpukhov?”

“What do you say?”

“Nothing.”

Yet the instinctive feeling which enables one person to guess the thoughts of another and serves as a guiding thread in conversation soon made Katenka feel that her indifference was disagreeable to me; wherefore she raised her head presently, and, turning round, said: 

“Did your Papa tell you that we girls too were going to live at your Grandmamma’s?”

“Yes, he said that we should all live there.”

“All live there?”

“Yes, of course.  We shall have one half of the upper floor, and you the other half, and Papa the wing; but we shall all of us dine together with Grandmamma downstairs.”

“But Mamma says that your Grandmamma is so very grave and so easily made angry?”

“No, she only seems like that at first.  She is grave, but not bad-tempered.  On the contrary, she is both kind and cheerful.  If you could only have seen the ball at her house!”

“All the same, I am afraid of her.  Besides, who knows whether we—­”

Katenka stopped short, and once again became thoughtful.

“What?” I asked with some anxiety.

“Nothing, I only said that—­”

“No.  You said, ‘Who knows whether we—­’”

“And you said, didn’t you, that once there was ever such a ball at Grandmamma’s?”