lled:

"Puffie! Puffie!"

At this call the little dog sprang from a neighboring chair, and
in the twinkle of an eye was on the bed.

Cara stroked the silken coat of the dog, and bending toward him
whispered:

"Puffie! Puffie! dear, little dog! lie here, sleep for thyself!"

She put him on her breast almost at her chin; with her hand on
his coat, and with the whisper: "Puffie! good Puffie!" she fell
asleep.

Then was heard the sound of a drozhky, coming quickly, with
uproar in front of the house, and again there was an end to
voices and movement. Two men ascended the stairway, one much
older than the other, with a carefully brushed, but somewhat worn
hat, in a fashionable but somewhat worn fur. He spoke in a low
voice:

"Yes, yes! c'est quelque chose d'inoui! he commanded me to break
off all relations with you, and to stop visiting his house."

"A thousand and one nights! Why is it? What is it for?" exclaimed
the other.

Suddenly he stopped part way on the stairs, and asked with a half
jeering, half pitying look at his companion:

"If he should find out?"

Kranitski turned his face away.

"My Maryan--with you--of that--"

"Painted pots!" laughed Maryan. "Do you take me for my
great-grandfather? Well, has he found it out?"

With red spots on his cheeks and forehead Kranitski blinked
affirmatively.

"Sapristi!" imprecated Maryan, and immediately he laughed again.
"And why? for what reason? Did he also believe in painted pots? I
thought him modern."

"Alas!" sighed Kranitski.

They advanced in silence, passed the first story of the house.
Maryan's bachelor chambers were on the second story.

"My dear old man, I am sorry for you, enormously sorry," began
young Darvid again. "I have grown so accustomed to you. You will
have to suffer, and poor mamma, too. Where did he get all this? A
man of such sense! I thought that his head was better
ventilated--"

He could not finish, for Kranitski threw himself on his neck at
the very door of his apartments. He wept. Drying his eyes with
his perfumed cambric handkerchief, he said:

"My Maryan, I shall not survive this blow! I love you all so
much--you are--for me--as a younger brother--"

He tried to kiss him, but Maryan broke away from his embrace, and
his tears, the moisture of which he felt on his face, with
discomfort.

"But it is absurd!" exclaimed he. "Are we to break our relations
because they displease someone? Are we slaves? Laugh at that, my
d