Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume IV).djvu/363



Bazarov smiled. 'What a devoted practitioner!'

'Don't laugh, please. Show me your finger. The cut is not a large one. Do I hurt?'

'Press harder; don't be afraid.'

Vassily Ivanovitch stopped. 'What do you think, Yevgeny; wouldn't it be better to burn it with hot iron?'

'That ought to have been done sooner; the caustic even is useless, really, now. If I've taken the infection, it's too late now.'

'How ... too late ...' Vassily Ivanovitch could scarcely articulate the words.

'I should think so! It's more than four hours ago.'

Vassily Ivanovitch burnt the cut a little more. 'But had the district doctor no caustic?'

'No.'

'How was that, good Heavens? A doctor not have such an indispensable thing as that!'

'You should have seen his lancets,' observed Bazarov as he walked away.

Up till late that evening, and all the following day, Vassily Ivanovitch kept catching at every possible excuse to go into his son's room; and though far from referring to the cut—he even tried to talk about the most irrelevant subjects—he looked so persistently into his face, and watched him in such trepidation, that Bazarov