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.