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They sat in the window and began whispering to one another; then they opened an atlas and looked carefully at a map. "First to Perm . . ." Lentilov said, in an undertone, "from there to Tiumen, then Tomsk . . . then . . . then . . . Kamchatka. There the Samoyedes take one over Behring's Straits in boats . . . . And then we are in America. . . . There are lots of furry animals there. . . ."
"I . . . I . . . I am coming!" "Well, put on your things, then." And Lentilov tried to cheer Volodya up by singing the praises of America, growling like a tiger, pretending to be a steamer, scolding him, and promising to give him all the ivory and lions' and tigers' skins.
A few minutes later, Volodya and his friend Lentilov, somewhat dazed by their noisy welcome, and still red from the outside cold, were sitting down to tea. The winter sun, making its way through the snow and the frozen tracery on the window-panes, gleamed on the samovar, and plunged its pure rays in the tea-basin.
"Mr. Lentilov." "No, I am Montehomo, the Hawk's Claw, Chief of the Ever Victorious." Masha, the youngest, looked at him, then into the darkness out of window and said, wondering: "And we had lentils for supper yesterday."
The day before Christmas Eve, Lentilov spent the whole day poring over the map of Asia and making notes, while Volodya, with a languid and swollen face that looked as though it had been stung by a bee, walked about the rooms and ate nothing.
"It doesn't seem long since the summer, when mamma was crying at your going . . . and here you are back again. . . . Time flies, my boy. Before you have time to cry out, old age is upon you. Mr. Lentilov, take some more, please help yourself! We don't stand on ceremony!" Lentilov was of the same height and age as Volodya, but not as round-faced and fair-skinned.
Throughout the conversation, Lentilov called himself "Montehomo, the Hawk's Claw," and Volodya was "my pale-face brother!" "Mind you don't tell mamma," said Katya, as they went back to bed. "Volodya will bring us gold and ivory from America, but if you tell mamma he won't be allowed to go."
He cleared his throat morosely, rubbed his left hand against his right, looked sullenly at Katya and asked: "Have you read Mayne Reid?" "No, I haven't. . . . I say, can you skate?" Absorbed in his own reflections, Lentilov made no reply to this question; he simply puffed out his cheeks, and gave a long sigh as though he were very hot.
Where did you spend the night?" "At the station," Lentilov answered proudly. Then Volodya went to bed, and had a compress, steeped in vinegar, on his forehead. A telegram was sent off, and next day a lady, Lentilov's mother, made her appearance and bore off her son. Lentilov looked morose and haughty to the end, and he did not utter a single word at taking leave of the little girls.
"I am going, only . . . wait a little . . . I want to be at home a little." "In that case I will go by myself," Lentilov declared. "I can get on without you. And you wanted to hunt tigers and fight! Since that's how it is, give me back my cartridges!" At this Volodya cried so bitterly that his sisters could not help crying too. Silence followed. "So you are not coming?" Lentilov began again.
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