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"Brought a birch with her, in case I should rebel at the last?" Victoria laughed. "Oh, well, you'll see her to-morrow," she remarked. "She's just the same. I'm rather glad, you know, that Krak hasn't been softened by age. It would have been commonplace." "Besides, one doesn't want to exaggerate the power of advancing years. You didn't come for anything except to tell me about Krak?"
Perhaps for once, when Victoria was hitting covertly at Krak, my mother remarked in a very cold voice: "You remember your punishments, you don't remember your offences, Victoria."
Krak sat beside it, grave, grim, and gray. Victoria was opposite to her. Victoria was crying. Past experience enlightened me; I knew exactly what had happened; Victoria had a delightfully unimpressionable soul; no rebuke from Krak brought her to tears; Krak had been rapping her knuckles, and her tears were an honest tribute to pain, with no nonsense of merely wounded sensibility about them.
The mother of Nial was called Asgerdr; she was the daughter of Ar, the Silent, the Lord of a district in Norway. She had come over to Iceland and settled down on land to the west of Markarfliot, between Oldustein and Selialandsmul. Holtathorir was her son, father of Thorlief Krak, from whom the Skogverjars are come, and likewise of Thorgrim the big and Skorargeir.
But I certainly did not recollect that either Krak or my mother had been in the habit of appealing to my affections; Krak's appeals, at least, had been addressed elsewhere. Yet my mother spoke in absolute sincerity. "It's only just at first that it matters," she went on in a calmer tone. "Afterward she won't mind. You'll learn not to expect too much from one another."
Meanwhile from the other side of the marsh came the sound of Stepan Arkadyevitch's shots, not frequent, but, as Levin fancied, well-directed, for almost after each they heard "Krak, Krak, apporte!" This excited Levin still more. The snipe were floating continually in the air over the reeds.
I shouldn't in the least mind keeping Krak as my daughter's governess," said Victoria. "That would be rather fun." "It would be very cruel, considering what Krak does," I objected. Dim hintings of the grown-up state were in Victoria; she looked a little doubtful. "It wouldn't matter when she was quite young," she concluded. "But I'm nearly fourteen.
The King is crowned, the man is lashed; they give us greatness in words: in fact, we are our servants' servants. Little as I liked the thing at the time, I can not now regret that I was chastised on my coronation day. I was thus put into an attitude eminently conducive to the perception of truth, and to a realization of the facts of my position. I forgive thee the blows, Krak Lo, I forgive thee!
Had getting quite well meant going back to Krak, I should have felt this point of view most strongly, but I was not to go back to Krak. There was a talk of a governor, of tutors, and masters. Hammerfeldt came down and had a long conversation with my mother.
As I grew older I gained a new and abiding source of pleasure in the contemplation and study of my sister Victoria. I have anticipated matters a little in telling of my tutor's departure; I must hark back and pick up the thread of Victoria's history from the time when I was hard on thirteen and she near fifteen the time when she had implored me to rid her of Krak.
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