It is strange that, when I was a child, I always wanted to be big, and now, since I have ceased being small, I frequently wish I were. How often this desire, not to be like a child, had, in my relations to Serézha, arrested the feeling which was ready to pour forth, and caused me to simulate. I not only did not dare to kiss him, which I frequently wanted to do, to take his hand, to say how glad I was to see him, but did not even dare to call him Serézha, but only Sergyéy: such was the relation established between us. Every expression of sentiment was a proof of childishness, and he who permitted himself such a thing was still a boy. Although we had not yet passed those bitter experiences which lead grown people to be cautious and cold in their relations with each other, we deprived ourselves of the pure enjoyment of a tender, childlike attachment, through the one strange desire to imitate grown people.
I met the Ivins in the antechamber, greeted them, and flew headlong to grandmother; I announced to her that the Ivins had come, with an expression as if this news ought to make her completely happy. Then, without taking my eyes off Serézha, I followed him into the drawing-room and watched all his movements. While grandmother said that he had grown much, and directed her penetrating eyes upon him, I experienced that feeling of terror and hope which the artist must experience when he is waiting for the respected judge to pass a sentence upon his production.
The young tutor of the Ivins, Herr Frost, went, with grandmother's permission, down into the garden with us, seated himself on a green bench, picturesquely crossed his legs, placing between them his cane with a brass knob, and, with the expression of a man who is satisfied with his actions, lighted a cigar.
Herr Frost was a German, but of an entirely different type from our good Karl Ivánovich. In the first place he
