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Ippolit Ippolititch put on his trousers hurriedly and asked in a flutter: "What is it?" "I am going to be married." Nikitin sat down beside his companion, and looking at him wonderingly, as though surprised at himself, said: "Only fancy, I am going to be married! To Masha Shelestov! I made an offer today." "Well? She seems a good sort of girl. Only she is very young."

Hush, father!" THERE was the thud of horses' hoofs on the wooden floor; they brought out of the stable the black horse, Count Nulin; then the white, Giant; then his sister Maika. They were all magnificent, expensive horses. Old Shelestov saddled Giant and said, addressing his daughter Masha: "Well, Marie Godefroi, come, get on! Hopla!"

And as usual he began slowly and emphatically saying what everybody knew. Nikitin's first lesson was on Russian language in the second class. When at nine o'clock punctually he went into the classroom, he saw written on the blackboard two large letters M. S. That, no doubt, meant Masha Shelestov. "They've scented it out already, the rascals . . ." thought Nikitin. "How is it they know everything?"

At home he found Varya and his father-in-law, who had come to dinner. Varya's eyes were red with crying, and she complained of a headache, while Shelestov ate a great deal, saying that young men nowadays were unreliable, and that there was very little gentlemanly feeling among them. "It's loutishness!" he said. "I shall tell him so to his face: 'It's loutishness, sir, I shall say."

Masha Shelestov was the youngest of the family; she was eighteen, but her family could not get used to thinking that she was not a little girl, and so they still called her Manya and Manyusa; and after there had been a circus in the town which she had eagerly visited, every one began to call her Marie Godefroi. "Hop-la!" she cried, mounting Giant.

"Not so ardently!" cried Shelestov with tears of laughter. "Not so ardently!" It was Nikitin's "fate" to hear the confessions of all. He sat on a chair in the middle of the drawing-room. A shawl was brought and put over his head. The first who came to confess to him was Varya. "I know your sins," Nikitin began, looking in the darkness at her stern profile.

After listening to him, Shelestov thought a little and said: "I am very grateful for the honour you do me and my daughter, but let me speak to you as a friend. I will speak to you, not as a father, but as one gentleman to another. Tell me, why do you want to be married so young? Only peasants are married so young, and that, of course, is loutishness. But why should you?

The second lesson was in the fifth class. And there two letters, M. S., were written on the blackboard; and when he went out of the classroom at the end of the lesson, he heard the shout behind him as though from a theatre gallery: "Hurrah for Masha Shelestov!" His head was heavy from sleeping in his clothes, his limbs were weighted down with inertia.

The samovar was already boiling on the table, old Shelestov was sitting with his friends, officials in the Circuit Court, and as usual he was criticizing something. "It's loutishness!" he said. "Loutishness and nothing more. Yes!"

"The one who has this card in his hand," old Shelestov began solemnly, lifting the top card of the second pack, "is fated to go into the nursery and kiss nurse." The pleasure of kissing the nurse fell to the lot of Shebaldin. They all crowded round him, took him to the nursery, and laughing and clapping their hands, made him kiss the nurse. There was a great uproar and shouting.