Page:The Bet and Other Stories.djvu/243

Rh years. . . . Anna dear, how old is our Nina?"

"She'll be ten next birthday," calls Anna Pavlovna from her room. "Why?"

"Nothing in particular, my dear. I was just curious. . . . And good singers used to come. Do you remember Prilipchin, the tenore di grazia? What a charming fellow he was! How good looking! Fair . . . a very expressive face, Parisian manners. . . . And what a voice, your Excellency! Only one weakness: he would sing some notes with his stomach and would take re falsetto—otherwise everything was good. Tamberlik, he said, had taught him. . . . My dear Anna and I hired a hall for him at the Social Club, and in gratitude for that he used to sing to us for whole days and nights. . . . He taught dear Anna to sing. He came—I remember it as though it were last night—in Lent, some twelve years ago. No, it's more . . . . How bad my memory is getting, Heaven help me! Anna dear, how old is our darling Nadya?

"Twelve."

"Twelve . . . then we've got to add ten months. . . . That makes it exact . . . thirteen. Somehow there used to be more life in our town then. . . . Take, for instance, the charity soirées. What enjoyable soirées we used to have before! How elegant! There were singing, playing, and recitation. . . . After the war, I remember, when the Turkish prisoners were here, dear Anna arranged a soirée on behalf of the wounded. We collected eleven hundred roubles. I remember