e, asking:

"Who has taken my scissors? Ivan Nikolaitch, have you taken my
scissors again?"

"Mercy on us! I'm not even allowed a pair of scissors!" their father
would respond in a lachrymose voice, and, flinging himself back in
his chair, he would pretend to be a deeply injured man; but a minute
later, he would be in ecstasies again.

On his former holidays Volodya, too, had taken part in the preparations
for the Christmas tree, or had been running in the yard to look at
the snow mountain that the watchman and the shepherd were building.
But this time Volodya and Lentilov took no notice whatever of the
coloured paper, and did not once go into the stable. They sat in
the window and began whispering to one another; then they opened
an atlas and looked carefully at a map.

"First to Perm . . ." Lentilov said, in an undertone, "from there
to Tiumen, then Tomsk . . . then . . . then . . . Kamchatka. There
the Samoyedes take one over Behring's Straits in boats . . . . And
then we are in America. . . . There are lots of furry animals
there. . . ."

"And California?" asked Volodya.

"California is lower down. . . . We've only to get to America and
California is not far off. . . . And one can get a living by hunting
and plunder."

All day long Lentilov avoided the little girls, and seemed to look
at them with suspicion. In the evening he happened to be left alone
with them for five minutes or so. It was awkward to be silent.

He cleared his throat morosely, rubbed his left hand against his
right, looked sullenly at Katya and asked:

"Have you read Mayne Reid?"

"No, I haven't. . . . I say, can you skate?"

Absorbed in his own reflections, Lentilov made no reply to this
question; he simply puffed out his cheeks, and gave a long sigh as
though he were very hot. He looked up at Katya once more and said:

"When a herd of bisons stampedes across the prairie the earth
trembles, and the frightened mustangs kick and neigh."

He smiled impressively and added:

"And the Indians attack the trains, too. But worst of all are the
mosquitoes and the termites."

"Why, what's that?"

"They're something like ants, but with wings. They bite fearfully.
Do you know who I am?"

"Mr. Lentilov."

"No, I am Montehomo, the Hawk's Claw, Chief of the Ever Victorious."

Masha, the youngest, looked at him, then into the darkness out of
window and said, wondering:

"And we had lentils for supper yesterday."

Lentilov's incompreh