my trousers, for I tore them yesterday, playing with Sashka in the street, we were snowballing."
"Well, well, well!"
"So she dressed me up to come and see you, and then pomaded my head and then gave me a regular kissing. She said: 'Go to Vasya, wish him a happy New Year, and ask whether they are happy, whether they had a good night, and . . .' to ask something else, oh yes! whether you had finished the work you spoke of yesterday . . . when you were there. Oh, I've got it all written down," said the boy, reading from a slip of paper which he took out of his pocket. "Yes, they were uneasy."
"It will be finished! It will be! Tell her that it will be. I shall finish it, on my word of honour!"
"And something else. . . . Oh yes, I forgot. Sister sent a little note and a present, and I was forgetting it! . . ."
"My goodness! Oh, you little darling! Where is it? where is it? That's it, oh! Look, brother, see what she writes. The darling, the precious! You know I saw there yesterday a paper-case for me; it's not finished, so she says, 'I am sending you a lock of my hair, and the other will come later.' Look, brother, look!"
And overwhelmed with rapture he showed Arkady Ivanovitch a curl of luxuriant, jet-black hair; then he kissed it fervently and put it in his breast pocket, nearest his heart.
"Vasya, I shall get you a locket for that curl," Arkady Ivanovitch said resolutely at last.
"And we are going to have hot veal, and to-morrow brains. Mamma wants to make cakes . . . but we are not going to have millet porridge," said the boy, after a moment's thought, to wind up his budget of interesting items.
"Oh! what a pretty boy," cried Arkady Ivanovitch. "Vasya, you are the happiest of mortals."
The boy finished his tea, took from Vasya a note, a thousand kisses, and went out happy and frolicsome as before.
"Well, brother," began Arkady Ivanovitch, highly delighted,
202
