Page:The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Tchekhoff, 1908.pdf/96

 followed us into the wing, and, for company's sake, ate five curd-fritters and a duck's wing. As he ate he looked at us. We seemed to inspire nothing but rapture and emotion. The worst nonsense of my tutor, every act of Tatiana Ivanovna, he found charming and entrancing. When after supper Tatiana Ivanovna sat quietly in a corner and knitted away, he kept his eyes on her fingers and chattered without cease.

“You, my friends, hurry up; make haste to live! God forbid that you should sacrifice to-day for to-morrow! The present is yours; it brings youth, health, ardour—the future is a mirage, smoke! As soon as you reach the age of twenty you must begin to live!”

Tatiana Ivanovna dropped a knitting-needle. My uncle hopped from his seat, recovered and restored it, with a bow which told me for the first time that there were men in the world more gallant than Pobiedimsky.

“Yes,” continued my uncle. “Love, marry! . . . Play the fool! Follies are much more vital and sane than labours such as mine, saner far than our efforts to lead a rational life. . . .”

My uncle spoke much, in fact at such length that we soon grew tired, and I sat aside on a box, listened, and dreamed. I was ofiended because he never once turned his attention on me. He stayed in the wing Rh