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"Yes, it IS a splendid thing!" he replied in a voice which, even in the darkness, enabled me to see the expression of his cheerful, kindly eyes and boyish smile. Next day Woloda and myself departed in a post-chaise for the country.
All that winter, until the opening of spring, Woloda had been inseparable from Dubkoff, while at the same time the pair of them had cooled greatly towards Dimitri. It was this last fact which, despite our love for one another, placed a vast gulf between Woloda and myself.
Woloda enters the anteroom with a beaming face, and embraces myself, Lubotshka, Mimi, and Katenka the latter blushing to her ears. He hardly knows himself for joy. And how smart he looks in that uniform! How well the blue collar suits his budding, dark moustache! What a tall, elegant figure is his, and what a distinguished walk! On that memorable day we all lunched together in Grandmamma's room.
"Nerves, nerves!" whispered the doctor. Papa turned to us and asked us where we had got the stuff, and how we could dare to play with it. "Don't ask THEM, ask that useless 'Uncle, rather," put in Grandmamma, laying a peculiar stress upon the word "UNCLE." "What else is he for?" "Woloda says that Karl Ivanitch gave him the powder himself," declared Mimi.
Woloda, apparently, was of the same opinion, for he begged me to undo the curls, and when I had done so and still looked unpresentable, he ceased to regard me at all, but throughout the drive to the Kornakoffs remained silent and depressed. In fact, I remained silent on that spot almost the whole evening!
Leaping up with a merry hoist of the shoulders, he came over to me, slapped me on the back with his great hand, and presented me his cheek to press my lips to. "Well done, DIPLOMAT!" he said in his most kindly jesting tone as he looked at me with his small bright eyes. "Woloda tells me you have passed the examinations well for a youngster, and that is a splendid thing.
"Well, get ready, Woloda," interrupted Dubkoff, tapping my brother on the shoulder and handing him his cloak. "Ignaz, get your master ready." "Therefore," continued Nechludoff, "it often happens with me that " But Dubkoff was not listening. "Tra-la-la-la," and he hummed a popular air. "Oh, but I'm not going to let you off," went on Nechludoff.
I hardly like to think how much of the best and most valuable time of my first sixteen years of existence I wasted upon its acquisition. Yet every one whom I imitated Woloda, Dubkoff, and the majority of my acquaintances seemed to acquire it easily. And all the time I felt that so much remained to be done if I was ever to attain my end!
Indeed, it was something of a problem how, after being brought up together and seeing one another daily, we ought now, after this first separation, to meet again. Katenka had grown better-looking than any of us, yet Woloda seemed not at all confused as, with a slight bow to her, he crossed over to Lubotshka, made a jesting remark to her, and then departed somewhere on some solitary expedition.
No; Woloda is older than I, and I am the youngest of the family, so he torments me. That is what he thinks of all day long how to tease me. He knows very well that he has woken me up and frightened me, but he pretends not to notice it. Disgusting brute! And his dressing-gown and cap and tassel too they are all of them disgusting." "Get up, children!
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