avoid us, and talk to no one but Mimi, as though you had no wish for our
further acquaintance."

"But one cannot always remain the same--one must change a little
sometimes," replied Katenka, who had an inveterate habit of pleading
some such fatalistic necessity whenever she did not know what else to
say.

I recollect that once, when having a quarrel with Lubotshka, who had
called her "a stupid girl," she (Katenka) retorted that EVERYBODY
could not be wise, seeing that a certain number of stupid people was
a necessity in the world. However, on the present occasion, I was not
satisfied that any such inevitable necessity for "changing sometimes"
existed, and asked further:

"WHY is it necessary?"

"Well, you see, we MAY not always go on living together as we are doing
now," said Katenka, colouring slightly, and regarding Philip's back with
a grave expression on her face. "My Mamma was able to live with your
mother because she was her friend; but will a similar arrangement always
suit the Countess, who, they say, is so easily offended? Besides, in
any case, we shall have to separate SOME day. You are rich--you have
Petrovskoe, while we are poor--Mamma has nothing."

"You are rich," "we are poor"--both the words and the ideas which they
connoted seemed to me extremely strange. Hitherto, I had conceived that
only beggars and peasants were poor and could not reconcile in my mind
the idea of poverty and the graceful, charming Katenka. I felt that Mimi
and her daughter ought to live with us ALWAYS and to share everything