Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 01.djvu/92



a month after we had settled in Moscow, I was sitting at a large table up-stairs, in grandmother's house, and writing. Our teacher of drawing sat opposite me, and gave a final touch to the head of a turbaned Turk, drawn with a black crayon. Volódya, standing behind the teacher, craned his neck and looked over his shoulder. This head was Volódya's first production in black crayon, and it was that very day to be presented to grandmother, it being her name day.

"And won't you throw some shadows here?" said Volódya to the teacher, rising on tiptoes, and pointing to the Turk's neck.

"No, it is not necessary," said the teacher, putting away the crayons and the drawing-pen in a box with a sliding lid. "It is all right this way, and don't touch it again. Well, and you, Nikólenka," he added, rising, and still looking sidewise at the Turk, "tell us, at last, your secret; what are you going to offer to grandmother? Really, it would be well if you, too, gave her a head. Good-bye, young gentlemen!" He took his hat and a ticket, and went out.

That moment I thought myself that a head would be better than what I was working on. When we were told that grandmother's name day would come soon, and that we ought to prepare some presents for that day, it occurred to me to write verses for the occasion, and I immediately picked