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“Oh, how nice,” thought Natsha; and when Snya and Nicholas had gone out of the conservatory she followed and called Bors to her.
“Bors, come here,” said she with a sly and significant look. “I have something to tell you. Here, here!” and she led him into the conservatory to the place among the tubs where she had been hiding.
Bors followed her, smiling.
“What is the something?” asked he.
She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll she had thrown down on one of the tubs, picked it up.
“Kiss the doll,” said she.
Bors looked attentively and kindly at her eager face, but did not reply.
“Don’t you want to? Well, then, come here,” said she, and went further in among the plants and threw down the doll. “Closer, closer!” she whispered.
She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity and fear appeared on her flushed face.
“And me? Would you like to kiss me?” she whispered almost inaudibly, glancing up at him from under her brows, smiling, and almost crying from excitement.
Bors blushed.
“How funny you are!” he said, bending down to her and blushing still more, but he waited and did nothing.
Suddenly she jumped up onto a tub to be higher than he, embraced him so that both her slender bare arms clasped him above his neck, and, tossing back her hair, kissed him full on the lips.
Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other side of the tubs and stood, hanging her head.
“Natsha,” he said, “you know that I love you, but....”
“You are in love with me?” Natsha broke in.
“Yes, I am, but please don’t let us do like that.... In another four years ... then I will ask for your hand.”
Natsha considered.
“Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,” she counted on her slender little fingers. “All right! Then it’s settled?”
A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.
“Settled!” replied Bors.
“Forever?” said the little girl. “Till death itself?”
She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into the adjoining sitting room.
After receiving her visitors, the countess was so tired that she gave orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to invite to dinner all who came “to congratulate.” The countess wished to have a tte--tte talk with the friend of her childhood, Princess Anna Mikhylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she returned from Petersburg. Anna Mikhylovna, with her tear-worn but pleasant face, drew her chair nearer to that of the countess.
“With you I will be quite frank,” said Anna Mikhylovna. “There are not many left of us old friends! That’s why I so value your friendship.”
Anna Mikhylovna looked at Vra and paused. The countess pressed her friend’s hand.
“Vra,” she said to her eldest daughter who was evidently not a favorite, “how is it you have so little tact? Don’t you see you are not wanted here? Go to the other girls, or...”
The handsome Vra smiled contemptuously but did not seem at all hurt.
“If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone,” she replied as she rose to go to her own room.
But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples sitting, one pair at each window. She stopped and smiled scornfully. Snya was sitting close to Nicholas who was copying out some verses for her, the first he had ever written. Bors and Natsha were at the other window and ceased talking when Vra entered. Snya and Natsha looked at Vra with guilty, happy faces.
It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love; but apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Vra.
“How often have I asked you not to take my things?” she said. “You have a room of your own,” and she took the inkstand from Nicholas.
“In a minute, in a minute,” he said, dipping his pen.
“You always manage to do things at the wrong time,” continued Vra. “You came rushing into the drawing room so that everyone felt ashamed of you.”
Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that very reason no one replied, and the four simply looked at one another. She lingered in the room with the inkstand in her hand.
“And at your age what secrets can there be between Natsha and Bors, or between you two? It’s all nonsense!”
“Now, Vra, what does it matter to you?” said Natsha in defense, speaking very gently.
She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to everyone.
“Very silly,” said Vra. “I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!”
“All have secrets of their own,” answered Natsha, getting warmer. “We don’t interfere with you and Berg.”
“I should think not,” said Vra, “because there can never be anything wrong in my behavior. But I’ll just tell Mamma how you are behaving with Bors.”
“Natlya Ilynchna behaves very well to me,” remarked Bors. “I have nothing to complain of.”
“Don’t, Bors! You are such a diplomat that it is really tiresome,” said Natsha in a mortified voice that trembled slightly. (She used the word “diplomat,” which was just then much in vogue among the children, in the special sense they attached to it.) “Why does she bother me?” And she added, turning to Vra, “You’ll never understand it, because you’ve never loved anyone. You have no heart! You are a Madame de Genlis and nothing more” (this nickname, bestowed on Vra by Nicholas, was considered very stinging), “and your greatest pleasure is to be unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with Berg as much as you please,” she finished quickly.
“I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors...”
“Well, now you’ve done what you wanted,” put in Nicholas—“said unpleasant things to everyone and upset them. Let’s go to the nursery.”
All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the room.
“The unpleasant things were said to me,” remarked Vra, “I said none to anyone.”
“Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!” shouted laughing voices through the door.
