“Say once and for all, are you going or are you not?”

“I am going, only… wait a little… I want to be at home a little.”

“In that case I will go by myself,” Lentilov declared. “I can get on without you. And you wanted to hunt tigers and fight! Since that’s how it is, give me back my cartridges!”

At this Volodya cried so bitterly that his sisters could not help crying too. Silence followed.

“So you are not coming?” Lentilov began again.

“I… I… I am coming!”

“Well, put on your things, then.”

And Lentilov tried to cheer Volodya up by singing the praises of America, growling like a tiger, pretending to be a steamer, scolding him, and promising to give him all the ivory and lions’ and tigers’ skins.

And this thin, dark boy, with his freckles and his bristling shock of hair, impressed the little girls as an extraordinary remarkable person. He was a hero, a determined character, who knew no fear, and he growled so ferociously, that, standing at the door, they really might imagine there was a tiger or lion inside. When the little girls went back to their room and dressed, Katya’s eyes were full of tears, and she said:

“Oh, I feel so frightened!”

Everything was as usual till two o’clock, when they sat down to dinner. Then it appeared that the boys were not in the house. They sent to the servants’ quarters, to the stables, to the bailiff’s cottage. They were not to be found. They sent into the village—they were not there.

At tea, too, the boys were still absent, and by supper-time Volodya’s mother was dreadfully uneasy, and even shed tears.

Late in the evening they sent again to the village, they searched everywhere, and walked along the river bank with lanterns. Heavens! what a fuss there was!

Next day the police officer came, and a paper of some sort was written out in the dining-room. Their mother cried.…

All of a sudden a sledge stopped at the door, with three white horses in a cloud of steam.

“Volodya’s come,” someone shouted in the yard.

“Master Volodya’s here!” bawled Natalya, running into the dining-room. And Milford barked his deep bass, “bow-wow.”

It seemed that the boys had been stopped in the Arcade, where they had gone from shop to shop asking where they could get gunpowder.

Volodya burst into sobs as soon as he came into the hall, and flung himself on his mother’s neck. The little girls, trembling, wondered with terror what would happen next. They saw their father take Volodya and Lentilov into his study, and there he talked to them a long while.

“Is this a proper thing to do?” their father said to them. “I only pray they won’t hear of it at school, you would both be expelled. You ought to be ashamed, Mr. Lentilov, really. It’s not at all the thing to do!