her tears with her apron and blew her nose.

"Who told you all this?" asked Serafima Aleksandrovna in an austere
low voice.

"Agathya says so, madam," answered Fedosya; "it's she that knows."

"Knows!" exclaimed Serafima Aleksandrovna in irritation, as though she
wished to protect herself somehow from this sudden anxiety. "What
nonsense! Please don't come to me with any such notions in the future.
Now you may go."

Fedosya, dejected, her feelings hurt, left her mistress.

"What nonsense! As though Lelechka could die!" thought Serafima
Aleksandrovna to herself, trying to conquer the feeling of coldness
and fear which took possession, of her at the thought of the possible
death of Lelechka. Serafima Aleksandrovna, upon reflection, attributed
these women's beliefs in omens to ignorance. She saw clearly that
there could be no possible connexion between a child's quite ordinary
diversion and the continuation of the child's life. She made a special
effort that evening to occupy her mind with other matters, but her
thoughts returned involuntarily to the fact that Lelechka loved to
hide herself.

When Lelechka was still quite small, and had learned to distinguish
between her mother and her nurse, she sometimes, sitting in her
nurse's arms, made a sudden roguish grimace, and hid her laughing face
in the nurse's shoulder. Then she would look out with a sly glance.

Of late, in those rare moments of the mistress' absence from the
nursery, Fedosya had again taught Lelechka to hide; and when
Lelechka's mother, on coming in, saw how lovely the child looked when
she was hiding, she herself began to play hide and seek with her tiny
daughter.

IV

The next day Serafima Aleksandrovna, absorbed in her joyous cares for
Lelechka, had forgotten Fedosya's words of the day before.

But when she returned to the nursery, after having ordered the dinner,
and she heard Lelechka suddenly cry _"Tiu-tiu!"_ from under the table,
a feeling of fear suddenly took hold of her. Though she reproached
herself at once for this unfounded, superstitious dread, nevertheless
she could not enter wholeheartedly into the spirit of Lelechka's
favourite game, and she tried to divert Lelechka's attention to
something else.

Lelechka was a lovely and obedient child. She eagerly complied with
her mother's new wishes. But as she had got into the habit of hiding
from her mother in some corner, and of crying out _"Tiu-tiu!"_ so even
that day she return