I suppose her dreaminess infected me. I, too, gave up reading, and
did nothing but dream. In the evenings, in spite of my fatigue, I
walked up and down the room, with my hands in my pockets, talking
of Masha.

"What do you think?" I would ask of my sister. "When will she come
back? I think she'll come back at Christmas, not later; what has
she to do there?"

"As she doesn't write to you, it's evident she will come back very
soon.

"That's true," I assented, though I knew perfectly well that Masha
would not return to our town.

I missed her fearfully, and could no longer deceive myself, and
tried to get other people to deceive me. My sister was expecting
her doctor, and I--Masha; and both of us talked incessantly,
laughed, and did not notice that we were preventing Karpovna from
sleeping. She lay on the stove and kept muttering:

"The samovar hummed this morning, it did hum! Oh, it bodes no good,
my dears, it bodes no good!"

No one ever came to see us but the postman, who brought my sister
letters from the doctor, and Prokofy, who sometimes came in to see
us in the evening, and after looking at my sister without speaking
went away, and when he was in the kitchen said:

"Every class ought to remember its rules, and anyone, who is so