In the church there was no one but the peasants, the servants and

their women-folk. But Darya Alexandrovna saw, or fancied she

saw, the sensation produced by her children and her. The

children were not only beautiful to look at in their smart little

dresses, but they were charming in the way they behaved.

Aliosha, it is true, did not stand quite correctly; he kept

turning round, trying to look at his little jacket from behind;

but all the same he was wonderfully sweet. Tanya behaved like a

grownup person, and looked after the little ones. And the

smallest, Lily, was bewitching in her naïve astonishment at

everything, and it was difficult not to smile when, after taking

the sacrament, she said in English, "Please, some more."

On the way home the children felt that something solemn had

happened, and were very sedate.

Everything went happily at home too; but at lunch Grisha began

whistling, and, what was worse, was disobedient to the English

governess, and was forbidden to have any tart. Darya

Alexandrovna would not have let things go so far on such a day

had she been present; but she had to support the English

governess's authority, and she upheld her decision that Grisha

should have no tart. This rather spoiled the general good humor.

Grisha cried, declaring that Nikolinka had whistled too, and he

was not punished, and that he wasn't crying for the tart--he

didn't care--but at being unjustly treated. This was really too

tragic, and Darya Alexandrovna made up her mind to persuade the

English governess to forgive Grisha, and she went to speak to

her. But on the way, as she passed the drawing room, she beheld

a scene, filling her heart with such pleasure that the tears came

into her eyes, and she forgave the delinquent herself.

The culprit was sitting at the window in the corner of the

drawing room; beside him was standing Tanya with a plate. On the

pretext of wanting to give some dinner to her dolls, she had

asked the governess's permission to take her share of tart to the

nursery, and had taken it instead to her brother. While still

weeping over the injustice of his punishment, he was eating the

tart, and kept saying through his sobs, "Eat yourself; let's eat

it together...together."

Tanya had at first been under the influence of her pity for

Grisha, then of a sense of her noble action, and tears were

standing in her eyes too; but she did not refuse, and ate her

share.

On catching sight of their mother they were dismayed, but,

looking into her face, they saw they were not doing wrong. They

burst out laughing, and, with their mouths full of tart, they

began wiping their smiling lips with their hands, and smearing

their radiant faces all over with tears and jam.




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