ounds. But they have to pass through bitter, agonising moments,
too.

Just before dinner, Vanya is sitting in his father's study, gazing
dreamily at the table. A kitten is moving about by the lamp, on
stamped note paper. Vanya is watching its movements, and thrusting
first a pencil, then a match into its little mouth. . . . All at
once, as though he has sprung out of the floor, his father is beside
the table.

"What's this?" Vanya hears, in an angry voice.

"It's . . . it's the kitty, papa. . . ."

"I'll give it you; look what you have done, you naughty boy! You've
dirtied all my paper!"

To Vanya's great surprise his papa does not share his partiality
for the kittens, and, instead of being moved to enthusiasm and
delight, he pulls Vanya's ear and shouts:

"Stepan, take away this horrid thing."

At dinner, too, there is a scene. . . . During the second course
there is suddenly the sound of a shrill mew. They begin to investigate
its origin, and discover a kitten under Nina's pinafore.

"Nina, leave the table!" cries her father angrily. "Throw the kittens
in the cesspool! I won't have the nasty things in the house! . . ."

Vanya and Nina are horrified. Death in the cesspool, apart from its
cruelty, threatens to rob the cat and the wooden horse of their
children, to lay waste the cat's box, to destroy their plans for
the future, that fair future in which one cat will be a comfort to
its old mother, another will live in the country, while the third
will catch rats in the cellar. The children begin to cry and entreat
that the kittens may be spared. Their father consents, but on the
condition that the children do not go into the kitchen and touch
the kittens.

After dinner, Vanya and Nina slouch about the rooms, feeling
depressed. The prohibition of visits to the kitchen has reduced
them to dejection. They refuse sweets, are naughty, and are rude
to their mother. When their uncle Petrusha comes in the evening,
they draw him aside, and complain to him of their father, who wanted
to throw the kittens into the cesspool.

"Uncle Petrusha, tell mamma to have the kittens taken to the nursery,"
the children beg their uncle, "do-o tell her."

"There, there . . . very well," says their uncle, waving them off.
"All right."

Uncle Petrusha does not usually come alone. He is accompanied by
Nero, a big black dog of Danish breed, with drooping ears, and a
tail as hard as a stick. The dog is silent, morose, and full of a