"Mistress, darling,"[1] said the nurse, coming up to Anna, and kissing her hands and her shoulders. "God sent this joy for our birthday celebration! You are not changed at all."
"Akh! nurse, my dear; I did not know that you were in the house," said Anna, coming to herself.
"I don't live here; I live with my daughter. I came to give my best wishes to Serozha, Anna Arkadyevna, galubushka."
The nurse suddenly began to weep, and to kiss Anna's hand.
Serozha, with bright, joyful eyes, and holding his mother with one hand and his nurse with the other, was dancing in his little bare feet on the carpet. His old nurse's tenderness toward his mother was delightful to him.
"Mamma, she often comes to see me; and when she comes ...." he began, but he stopped short when he perceived that the nurse whispered something in his mother's ear, and that his mother's face assumed an expression of fear, and something like shame which did not go well with his mother.
Anna went to him.
"My precious!" she said.
She could not say the word prashchaï, "farewell"; but the expression of her face said it, and he understood.
"My precious, precious Kutik!" she said, calling him by a pet name which she used when he was a baby. "You will not forget me; you ...." but she could not say another word.
Only then she began to think of the words which she wanted to say to him, but now it was impossible to say them. But Serozha understood all that she would have said; he understood that she was unhappy, and that she loved him. He even understood what the nurse whispered in her ear; he heard the words "always at nine o'clock," and he knew that they referred to his father, and that his mother must not meet him. He understood this, but one thing he could not understand: why did her
- ↑ Baruinya, galubushka
