Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 01.djvu/117

Rh weep, but he did not even show that he had been hurt, and did not for a minute forget the game.

Soon after that, when Ilínka Grap joined our company and we went up-stairs before dinner, Serézha had occasion to captivate me even more and to impress me with his remarkable manliness and fortitude of character.

Ilínka Grap was the son of a poor foreigner, who had once lived at my grandfather's. He was in some way under obligations to him, and for some reason regarded it as his duty to send his son to us as often as possible. If he thought that our acquaintance would afford his son any honour or pleasure, he was in this respect completely mistaken, because we not only were not friendly with Ilínka, but turned our attention to him only when we wanted to make fun of him. Ilínka was a boy of about thirteen years of age, thin, tall, pale, with a birdlike face, and a good-natured, submissive expression. He was dressed very poorly, but was always so copiously covered with pomatum that we used to assert that on a warm day the pomatum melted on Grap's head and ran under his blouse. When I think of him now, I find that he was a very obliging, quiet, and good boy; but then he appeared to me such a contemptible being that it was not worth while to pity him or even to think of him.

When the game of robbers stopped, we went up-stairs, and began to show off and to brag before each other with all kinds of gymnastic tricks. Ilínka looked at us with a timid smile of wonderment, and when it was proposed that he should do likewise, he declined, saying that he did not have any strength. Serézha was wonderful; he took off his blouse; his face and eyes were red, for he continually laughed and tried new tricks: he jumped over three chairs placed in a row, turned somersaults through the whole length of the room, stood on his head on Tatíschev's dictionaries, which he had placed in the middle of the room in the shape of a pedestal, and did