II. Детвора

It was a Sunday, and there were no lessons.

But eleven o'clock had already struck, and he absolutely had to go out "on a certain very important matter," yet meanwhile he remained alone in the whole house, and positively as its guardian, for it had so happened that all its grown-up inhabitants had, owing to a certain urgent and unusual circumstance, gone out.

In the house of the widow Krassotkina, across the entry from the apartment she herself occupied, there was let out one more and only other little flat in the house, of two small rooms, and it was occupied by a doctor's wife with two young children.

This doctor's wife was the same age as Anna Fyodorovna and a great friend of hers, while the doctor himself had, a year ago now, taken himself off somewhere — first to Orenburg, then to Tashkent — and for half a year already not a word, not a whisper, had come from him, so that had it not been for her friendship with Madame Krassotkina, which somewhat softened the grief of the abandoned doctor's wife, she would positively have dissolved away in tears from that grief.

And it had to happen, to crown all the oppressions of fate, that on that very night, from Saturday to Sunday, Katerina, the doctor's wife's only servant, suddenly and quite unexpectedly for her mistress announced to her that she intended to give birth to a baby by morning.

How it had come about that no one had noticed it beforehand was almost a miracle to everyone.

The astonished doctor's wife decided, while there was still time, to take Katerina to an establishment in our town fitted out for such cases, kept by a midwife.

Since she greatly valued this servant, she carried out her plan without delay, conveyed her there, and, over and above that, stayed there with her.

Then, by morning, the whole friendly concern and help of Madame Krassotkina herself was somehow required, for in this matter she could ask someone for something and extend a certain measure of patronage.

Thus both ladies were away, and Madame Krassotkina's own servant, the peasant woman Agafya, had gone to the market, and so Kolya found himself for a time the keeper and sentinel of the "bubbles" — that is, of the doctor's wife's little boy and girl, who had been left all alone.

Kolya was not afraid to guard the house; besides, Perezvon was with him, who had been commanded to lie face down in the entry under the bench "without moving," and who for that very reason, each time Kolya, pacing through the rooms, came into the entry, gave a start of the head and beat two firm, ingratiating taps of his tail on the floor — but alas, no summoning whistle was sounded.

Kolya would glance menacingly at the wretched dog, and it would once more freeze in obedient torpor.

But if anything troubled Kolya, it was solely the "bubbles."

On the unforeseen adventure with Katerina he looked, of course, with the deepest contempt, but the orphaned bubbles he loved very much, and he had already brought them some children's book.

Nastya, the elder girl, already eight years old, could read, while the younger bubble, the seven-year-old boy Kostya, loved very much to listen when Nastya read to him.

To be sure, Krassotkin could have entertained them more amusingly — that is, set the two of them side by side and begun playing soldiers with them, or hide-and-seek all over the house.

This he had more than once done before and did not scorn to do, so that even at school it had once gotten about that Krassotkin played horses at home with his little lodgers, prancing as the trace-horse and bending his head; but Krassotkin proudly parried this accusation, pointing out that with one's coevals, with thirteen-year-olds, it would indeed be shameful to play horses "in this day and age," but that he did it for the "bubbles" because he loved them, and that no one dared to demand of him an account of his feelings.

And in return both "bubbles" adored him.

But this time there was no thought of toys.

Before him lay a certain very important matter of his own, and one with an air about it of being almost even mysterious; meanwhile the time was slipping away, and Agafya, with whom the children could have been left, still would not come back from the market.

Several times already he had crossed the entry, opened the door to the doctor's wife's rooms, and anxiously surveyed the "bubbles," who, on his orders, were sitting over their book, and each time he opened the door they smiled at him silently, grinning from ear to ear, expecting that now he would come in and do something splendid and entertaining.

But Kolya was in inward distress and did not go in.

At last eleven struck, and he resolved firmly and finally that if in ten minutes the "accursed" Agafya did not come back, he would go out without waiting for her — having, of course, first taken the "bubbles'" word that they would not lose their nerve without him, would not get up to mischief, and would not cry for fear.

With these thoughts he put on his quilted winter coat, with its fur collar of some sort of sealskin, slung his bag across his shoulder, and, despite his mother's previous repeated entreaties that, in "such cold" as this, he should always put on his galoshes when going out, he only cast a contemptuous glance at them as he passed through the entry and went out in just his boots.

Perezvon, catching sight of him dressed to go out, began beating his tail vigorously against the floor, twitching nervously all over, and even let out a plaintive whine; but Kolya, at the sight of his dog's such passionate eagerness, concluded that this was detrimental to discipline, and for one more minute kept him under the bench, and only when he had already opened the door into the entry did he suddenly whistle for him.

The dog leapt up like one possessed and flung himself into capering about in front of him with delight.

Crossing the entry, Kolya opened the door to the "bubbles."

Both were sitting at the little table as before, but they were no longer reading; they were hotly disputing about something.

These children often quarreled with each other about various provoking questions of everyday life, with Nastya, as the elder, always gaining the upper hand; and Kostya, if he did not agree with her, would almost always go off to appeal to Kolya Krassotkin, and once he had decided a thing, so it stood, in the form of an absolute verdict for all parties.

This time the "bubbles'" dispute rather interested Krassotkin, and he stopped in the doorway to listen.

The children saw that he was listening, and with all the greater ardor went on with their wrangling.

"Never, never will I believe," Nastya prattled hotly, "that midwives find little children in the kitchen garden, among the cabbage beds.

It's winter now, and there aren't any beds at all, so the midwife couldn't have brought Katerina a baby girl."

"Phew!" Kolya whistled to himself.

"Or maybe it's like this: they bring them from somewhere, but only to those who are getting married."

Kostya gazed fixedly at Nastya, listened with profound seriousness, and pondered.

"Nastya, what a goose you are," he pronounced at last, firmly and without getting heated, "how can Katerina have a baby when she isn't married?"

Nastya grew terribly heated.

"You don't understand anything," she snapped irritably, "maybe she had a husband, only he's sitting in prison, and there she's gone and had a baby."

"But is her husband really sitting in prison?" the matter-of-fact Kostya inquired gravely.

"Or rather, here's how it is," Nastya broke in impetuously, completely dropping and forgetting her first hypothesis, "she has no husband, you're right about that, but she wants to get married, and so she began to think how she would get married, and she kept thinking and thinking and thinking about it until at last, instead of a husband, what she had was a baby."

"Well, that could be," agreed the utterly vanquished Kostya, "but you didn't say that before, so how was I supposed to know?"

"Well, you small fry," Kolya pronounced, stepping into the room toward them, "you're a dangerous lot, I see!"

"And Perezvon is with you?" Kostya grinned and began snapping his fingers and calling Perezvon.

"Bubbles, I'm in a fix," Krassotkin began importantly, "and you must help me; Agafya, of course, has broken her leg, since she still hasn't shown up — that's decided and signed — and I absolutely must go out.

Will you let me go or not?"

The children glanced anxiously at each other, their slackened faces beginning to show uneasiness.

They did not yet, however, fully understand what was being asked of them.

"You won't get up to mischief while I'm gone?

You won't climb on the cupboard and break your legs?

You won't cry from fear, all alone?"

On the children's faces a dreadful anguish appeared.

"And in return I could show you a certain little thing — a brass cannon, one you can fire with real powder."

The children's faces instantly brightened.

"Show us the cannon," said Kostya, all aglow.