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"No one ought to criticise such a father as ours. Mimi has the right to, but not you, however much you may be the eldest brother." "Oh you don't understand anything," said Woloda contemptuously. "Try and do so. How can it be a good thing that a 'Dunetchka' of an Epifanov should take the place of our dead Mamma?" For a moment Lubotshka was silent. Then the tears suddenly came into her eyes.
I felt depressed, and kept thinking more and more that my father was to blame in the matter. Presently I heard his voice and Woloda's speaking together in the pantry, and, not wishing to meet Papa just then, had just left the room when I was pursued by Lubotshka, who said that Papa wanted to see me.
Every time that he approached the piano he halted for a moment and looked fixedly at Lubotshka. By his walk and his every movement, I could see that he was greatly agitated. Once, when he stopped behind Lubotshka, he kissed her black hair, and then, wheeling quickly round, resumed his pacing.
After luncheon, Lubotshka showed me a paper on which she had written down a list of her sins: upon which I observed that, although the idea was excellent so far as it went, it would be still better for her to write down her sins on her SOUL "a very different matter." "Why is it 'a very different matter'?" asked Lubotshka.
All these festivities so said Lubotshka would have gone off splendidly but for the intolerable Peter, who had spoilt everything by his puffing and stuttering. After our coming, however, the Epifanovs only visited us twice, and we went once to their house, while after St. Papa remained unceasingly in the same buoyant mood as had so greatly struck me on the day after our arrival.
Mimi looked displeased, and said that only silly people laughed for no reason at all, but Lubotshka her face purple with suppressed merriment needed but to give me a sly glance, and we again burst out into such Homeric laughter, when our eyes met, that the tears rushed into them and we could not stop our paroxysms, although they nearly choked us.
It won't matter much to you or myself, but Lubotshka will soon be making her debut, and it will hardly be nice for her to have such a 'belle mere' as this a woman who speaks French badly, and has no manners to teach her." Although it seemed odd to hear Woloda criticising Papa's choice so coolly, I felt that he was right. "Why is he marrying her?" I asked.
"Well, what new sin have you gone and committed?" I asked. "Nothing," she replied with another blush. All at once we heard Dimitri's voice raised in the hall as he took his leave of Woloda. "It seems to me you are always experiencing some new temptation," said Katenka, who had entered the room behind us, and now stood looking at Lubotshka.
After discoursing awhile of the weather and the amenities of country life, he skilfully directed the conversation to piano-tuners, music, and pianos generally, and ended by saying that he himself played and in truth he did sit down and perform three waltzes, with Mimi, Lubotshka, and Katenka grouped about the instrument, and watching him as he did so.
Throughout the drive Lubotshka and I were in that particularly merry mood when the least trifle, the least word or movement, sets one off laughing. A pedlar went trotting across the road with a tray, and we laughed. Some ragged cabmen, brandishing their reins and driving at full speed, overtook our sledge, and we laughed again.
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