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354 the nursery she knew that he would be crying. And, indeed, he was.

She heard his voice, and quickened her steps. But the more she hurried, the louder he cried. It was a fine, healthy scream, a scream of hunger and impatience.

"Am I late, nurse, late?" asked Kitty, sitting down, and getting ready to suckle the child. "There, give him to me, give him to me, quick, Akh, nurse! how stupid! Take off his cap afterward," said she, quite as impatient as her baby.

The baby screamed as if it were famished. "Now, now, it can't be helped, little mother!" said Agafya Mikhaïlovna, who could not keep out of the nursery. "You must do things in order. Agu, agu," she chuckled to the infant, not heeding Kitty's impatience.

The nurse gave the child to his mother. Agafya Mikhaïlovna followed the child, her face all aglow with tenderness.

"He knows me! He knows me! God is my witness, he knew me, Matushka Katerina Aleksandrovna," she cried.

But Kitty did not hear what she said. Her impatience was as great as the baby's. It hindered the very thing that they both desired. The baby, in his haste to suckle, could not manage to take hold, and was vexed. At last, after one final shriek of despair, the arrangements were perfected; and mother and child, simultaneously breathing a sigh of content, became calm.

"The poor little thing is all in a perspiration," whispered Kitty. "Do you really think he knew you?" she added, looking down into the child's eyes, which seemed to her to peep out roguishly from under his cap, as his little cheeks sucked in and out, while his little hand, with rosy palm, flourished around his head. "It cannot be. For, if he knew you, he would surely know me," continued Kitty, with a smile, when Agafya Mikhaïlovna persisted in her belief that he knew her.

She smiled, because though she said that he could not recognize her, yet she knew in her heart that he not only recognized Agafya Mikhaïlovna, but that he knew