THE SWEET-SCENTED NAME
and then she drawled, in a contemptuous tone of voice:
"What's this, Volodya? Why have you got this wretched little barefooted boy here? Go off indoors, and in future don't dare to try and make his acquaintance."
Volodya got red and muttered something or other, but Grishka had already run off home to the kitchen.
Now, in the street, he thought to himself:
"It's impossible that it's all like that. I can't be really only Grishka, the cook's little boy, whom nice children like Volodya and the general's son aren't allowed to know."
And in the baker's shop, when he was buying the cakes he had been sent for—none of which would fall to his own share,—and all along his homeward way, Grishka was thinking sometimes about the beautiful Turandina, the proud and wise princess, sometimes of the strange actuality of the life around him, and he thought again:
"Who am I? And what is my own real name?"
He imagined that he was the son of an emperor, and that the proud palace of his forefathers stood in a beautiful far-off land. He had long been suffering from a grievous
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