Page:The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Tchekhoff, 1908.pdf/98

 uncle was present, looked still more viciously at his wife. Pobiedimsky ceased to speak about epizootic diseases, frowned, and sometimes smiled ironically.

“Here comes our mouse-foal!” he growled once, as uncle approached the wing.

Searching for an explanation, I concluded that both had taken offence. My uncle confused their names, and to the day of his departure had not learnt which was my tutor and which Tatiana Ivanovna's husband. As for Tatiana Ivanovna, he called her indiscriminately “Nastasya,” “Pelageya,” and “Yevdokia.” In his emotion and delight he treated all four of us as young children. All of which, of course, might easily be taken as offensive by young people. But the cause of the change of manner lay not in this, but, as I soon understood, in subtler shades of feeling.

I remember one evening I sat on a box and fought my desire to sleep. My eyelids drooped, my body, fatigued with a day's hard exercise, fell on one side. It was nearly midnight. Tatiana Ivanovna, rosy and meek, as always, sat at a little table and mended her husband's underclothes. From one corner glared Feodor, grim and morose; in another sat Pobiedimsky, hidden behind his high collar, and angrily snoring. My uncle, lost in thought, walked from corner to corner. No one spoke, the only sound was the rustling of the cloth in Tatiana's hands. My uncle suddenly stopped in front of Tatiana Ivanovna, and said—