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Updated: July 15, 2025
With them it holds aloof everything evil, everything mean!" The door opened, admitting a cold, damp, autumn draught. Sofya entered, bold, a smile on her face, reddened by the cold. "Upon my word, the spies are as attentive to me as a bridegroom to a rich bride! I must leave this place. Well, how are you, Vanya? All right? How's Pavel, Nilovna? What! is Sasha here?"
And Vanya and Maroosia went in with him to help him as much as they could; though Vanya was wondering all the time whether he could make a net, and throw it in the little river where old Peter fished, and perhaps pull out a golden fish that would speak to him with the voice of a human being. Once upon a time a horse's skull lay on the open plain.
But this division turns out to be premature; the cat, still wearing an imploring and sentimental expression on her face, goes the round of all the hat-boxes, and carries off her children to their original position. "The cat's their mother," observed Vanya, "but who is their father?" "Yes, who is their father?" repeats Nina. "They must have a father."
Vanya asked whether there were any stories left which they had not already heard. "Why," said old Peter, "you have heard scarcely any of the stories, for there is a story to be told about everything in the world." "About everything, grandfather?" asked Vanya. "About everything," said old Peter.
"Wouldn't that be lovely!" said Maroosia. Vanya thought for a minute, and then he said, "I'd love her much more than a hen." Once upon a time, very long ago, there was a little Prince Ivan who was dumb. Never a word had he spoken from the day that he was born not so much as a "Yes" or a "No," or a "Please" or a "Thank you." A great sorrow he was to his father because he could not speak.
"He'd have found it very dull in Novgorod, even though it is a big town." The children, in their little sheepskin coats and high felt boots and fur hats, trudged along the forest path in the snow. Vanya went first, then Maroosia, and then old Peter. The ground was white and the snow was hard and crisp, and all over the forest could be heard the crackling of the frost.
There were blankets on it, and in those blankets Vanya and Maroosia rolled up and went to sleep at night, as warm as little baking cakes. The hut was made of pine logs cut from the forest. You could see the marks of the axe. Old Peter was the grandfather of Maroosia and Vanya. He lived alone with them in the hut in the forest, because their father and mother were both dead.
It was dusk, for dusk comes early in winter, and a little way through the trees before them they saw the lamp of their hut glittering on the snow. The big dog barked and ran forward, and the children with him. The soup was warm on the stove, and in a few minutes they were sitting at the table, Vanya, Maroosia, and old Peter, blowing at their steaming spoons.
'You tell her to come. 'Very well. 'Tell her I have a present for her. 'And a present for me too? 'Yes, you too. Vanya sighed. 'No; I don't want one. Better give it to her; she is so kind to us at home. And Vanya laid his head down again on the ground. Pavel got up and took the empty pot in his hand. 'Where are you going? Fedya asked him.
"Mind now!" they admonish him, "stand here and see they behave themselves properly." All this is said and done in the gravest way, with an expression of anxiety on their faces. Vanya and Nina refuse to recognise the existence of any world but the box of kittens. Their joy knows no bounds. But they have to pass through bitter, agonising moments, too.
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