“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.
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?”
“Well, but how large do you _imagine?_ As large as Serpukhov?”
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.”
“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.
“And _you_ said, didn’t you, that once there was ever such a ball at Grandmamma’s?”
“Yes. It is a pity you were not there. There were heaps of guests—about a thousand people, and all of them princes or generals, and there was music, and I danced—But, Katenka” I broke off, “you are not listening to me?”
“Oh yes, I am listening. You said that you danced—?”
“But you have changed tremendously since Woloda and I first went to Moscow. Tell me the truth, now: why are you so odd?” My tone was resolute.
“_Am_ I so odd?” said Katenka with an animation which showed me that my question had interested her. “I don’t see that I am so at all.”