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"No; hold on, Woloda, and let me try and do it," put in Dimitri at length, with a glance at the professors' corner as he seated himself beside me. I could see that my friend was in the best of humours. This was always the case with him when he was satisfied with himself, and was one of the things in him which I liked best.
Yet my complacency was soon marred by an unfortunate occurrence, Desiring to outdo Woloda before the audience in the carriage, I dropped a little behind. Then with whip and spur I urged my steed forward, and at the same time assumed a natural, graceful attitude, with the intention of whooting past the carriage on the side on which Katenka was seated.
Jerome and Woloda the latter no longer in his grey cap and blue frockcoat, but in the uniform of a student of the University, with its embroidered blue collar, three-cornered hat, and gilded sword. "Ah! If only SHE had been alive now!" exclaimed Grandmamma on seeing Woloda in this dress, and swooned away.
At this critical moment, Woloda, who had remarked that I was conversing with great animation, and probably was curious to know what excuses I was making for not dancing, approached us with Dubkoff. Seeing, however, my smiling face and the Princess's frightened mien, as well as overhearing the appalling rubbish with which I concluded my speech, he turned red in the face, and wheeled round again.
When we sat on the ground and imagined that we were sitting in a boat and either fishing or rowing with all our might, Woloda persisted in sitting with folded hands or in anything but a fisherman's posture. I made a remark about it, but he replied that, whether we moved our hands or not, we should neither gain nor lose ground certainly not advance at all, and I was forced to agree with him.
Woloda's hands were large and red, whilst in the crook of the thumb and the way in which the other fingers curved themselves round the cards as he held them they so exactly resembled Papa's that now and then I could not help thinking that Woloda purposely held the cards thus so as to look the more like a grownup.
At other times, filled with a sense of envious jealousy, I would conceal myself behind a door and listen to the sounds which came from the maidservants' room, until the thought would occur to my mind, "How if I were to go in now and, like Woloda, kiss Masha? What should I say when she asked me ME with the huge nose and the tuft on the top of my head what I wanted?"
And now," he went on, addressing himself more particularly to Woloda and myself, and having the appearance of speaking hurriedly in order to prevent us from interrupting him, "it is time for you to depart, while I myself am going to stay here until the New Year, and then to follow you to Moscow with" again he hesitated a moment "my wife and Lubotshka."
"Are you going to stay in to-night, Woloda?" "I don't know. Why?" "Oh, because " Seeing that the conversation did not promise to be a success, I took up my book again, and began to read.
"One thing only I wish for," I continued; "and that is that I could always be with her and always be seeing her. Just that. You are in love too, I believe. Confess that you are." It was strange, but somehow I wanted every one to be in love with Sonetchka, and every one to tell me that they were so. "So that's how it is with you? " said Woloda, turning round to me. "Well, I can understand it."
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