Not wishing to be behind them in anything, I also fell in love with Miss Ptitzin. I do not remember how I declared my feelings, but I know that the affair ended badly. On the stagnant green water of the Zvyezdin Pond floated a plank, and I proposed to give the young lady a ride on it. She agreed. I brought the log to the bank; it held me alone quite well. But when the gorgeously dressed young lady, all ribbons and lace, graciously stepped on the other end, and I proudly pushed off with a stick, the accursed log rolled away from under us and my young lady went head over heels into the water. I threw myself in knightly fashion after her, and swiftly brought her to shore. Fright and the green mire of the pond had quite destroyed her beauty! Shaking her wet fist at me threateningly, she cried: "You threw me in the water on purpose!" And refusing to believe in the sincerity of my protestations, from that time she treated me as an enemy. On the whole, I did not find living in the town very interesting. My old mistress was as hostile as she had ever been; the young one regarded me with contempt; Victorushka more freckled than ever, snorted at every one, and was everlastingly aggrieved about something. My master had many plans to draw. He could not get through all the work with his brother, and so he engaged my stepfather as assistant. One day I came home from the market-place early, about five o'clock, and going into the dining-room, saw the man whose existence I had forgotten, at the table beside the master. He held his hand out to me. "How do you do?" I drew back at the unexpectedness of it. The fire of the past had been suddenly rekindled, and burned my heart. My stepfather looked at me with a smile on his terribly emaciated face; his dark eyes were larger than ever. He looked altogether worn out and depressed. I placed my hand in his thin, hot fingers. "Well, so we 've met again," he said, coughing. I left them, feeling as weak as if I had been beaten. Our manner to each other was cautious and restrained; he called me by my first name and my patronymic, and spoke to me as an equal. "When you go to the shops, please buy me a quarter of a pound of Lapherm's tobacco, a hundred packets of Vitcorson's, and a pound of boiled sausage." The money which he gave me was always unpleasantly heated by his hot hands. It was plain that he was a consumptive, and not long to be an inhabitant of this earth. He knew this, and would say in a calm, deep voice, twisting his pointed black beard: "My illness is almost incurable. However, if I take plenty of meat I may get better--I may get better." He ate an unbelievably large amount; he smoked cigarettes, which were only out of his lips when he was eating. Every day I bought him sausages, ham, sardines, but grandmother's sister said with an air of certainty, and for some reason maliciously: "It is no use to feed Death with dainties; you cannot deceive him."