see him.'

Fenitchka blushed all over with confusion and delight. She was afraid
of Pavel Petrovitch; he had scarcely ever spoken to her.

'Dunyasha,' she called; 'will you bring Mitya, please.' (Fenitchka did
not treat any one in the house familiarly.) 'But wait a minute, he must
have a frock on,' Fenitchka was going towards the door.

'That doesn't matter,' remarked Pavel Petrovitch.

'I will be back directly,' answered Fenitchka, and she went out
quickly.

Pavel Petrovitch was left alone, and he looked round this time with
special attention. The small low-pitched room in which he found himself
was very clean and snug. It smelt of the freshly painted floor and of
camomile. Along the walls stood chairs with lyre-shaped backs, bought
by the late general on his campaign in Poland; in one corner was a
little bedstead under a muslin canopy beside an iron-clamped chest with
a convex lid. In the opposite corner a little lamp was burning before a
big dark picture of St. Nikolai the wonder-worker; a tiny porcelain egg
hung by a red ribbon from the protruding gold halo down to the saint's
breast; by the windows greenish glass jars of last year's jam carefully
tied down could be seen; on their paper covers Fenitchka herself had
written in big letters 'Gooseberry'; Nikolai Petrovitch was
particularly fond of that preserve. On a long cord from the ceiling a
cage hung with a short-tailed siskin in it; he was constantly chirping
and hopping about, the cage was constantly shaking and swinging, while
hempseeds fell with a light tap on to the floor. On the wall just above
a small chest of drawers hung some rather bad photographs of Nikolai
Petrovitch in various attitudes, taken by an itinerant photographer;
there too hung a photograph of Fenitchka herself, which was an absolute
failure; it was an eyeless face wearing a forced smile, in a dingy
frame, nothing more could be made out; while above Fenitchka, General
Yermolov, in a Circassian cloak, scowled menacingly upon the Caucasian
mountains in the distance, from beneath a little silk shoe for pins
which fell right on to his brows.

Five minutes passed; bustling and whispering could be heard in the next
room. Pavel Petrovitch took up from the chest of drawers a greasy book,
an odd volume of Masalsky's _Musketeer_, and turned over a few
pages.... The door opened, and Fenitchka came in with Mitya in her
arms. She had put on him a little red smock with embroidery on the
collar, had