He lowered himself on to his knees at his sister's feet and laid his head in her lap. She caressed him and tickled him. Misha laughed, scrabbling with his knees on the floor. Suddenly his sister pushed him from her and sat down on the sofa. Misha remained alone. He stayed awhile on his knees, and looked questioningly at his sister. She seated herself more comfortably and picked up a book as if to read, but watched her brother over it. "Well, I'm tired now," he said plaintively. "I'm not keeping you there, you put yourself there," answered Nadezhda, smiling over her book. "Well, I've been punished, let me go, please," entreated Misha. "Did I put you on your knees?" said Nadezhda in a voice of assumed indifference. "Why do you bother me?" "I'll not get up until you've forgiven me." Nadezhda burst out laughing, put the book aside, and taking hold of Misha's shoulders, pulled him to her. He gave a squeal and threw himself into her arms exclaiming: "Pavloushka's bride!" [1] _Liutiki,_ a sort of buttercup. The word "liuti" means "cruel, ferocious, violent," which gives the point of Peredonov's reflection. CHAPTER XVI The dark-eyed boy occupied all Liudmilla's thoughts. She often talked about him with her own family and with acquaintances, sometimes unseasonably. Almost every night she saw him in a dream, sometimes quiet and ordinary but often in a wild and fantastic guise. Her accounts of these dreams became so habitual with her that her sisters began to ask her every morning how she had dreamed of Sasha. She spent all her leisure thinking about him. On Sunday Liudmilla prevailed on her sisters to ask Kokovkina in after Mass and to keep her a while. She wanted to find Sasha alone. She herself did not go to church. She instructed her sisters: "Tell her that I overslept myself." Her sisters laughed at her plot but agreed to help her. They lived very amicably together. Besides this suited them admirably--Liudmilla would occupy herself with a boy and that would leave them the more eligible young men. And they did as they promised--they invited Kokovkina to come in after Mass. In the meantime Liudmilla got ready to go. She dressed herself very gaily and handsomely and scented herself with soft syringa perfume, and she put a new bottle of scent and a small sprinkler into her white bead-trimmed hand-bag, and stood just behind the blind in the drawing-room so that she could see whether Kokovkina was coming. She had thought of taking the scent before this--to scent the schoolboy so that he would not smell of his detestable Latin, ink and boyishness. Liudmilla loved perfumes, ordered them from Peterburg and consumed a great deal of them. She loved aromatic flowers. Her room was always full of some sweet scent--with flowers, with perfumes, with pines, and in the spring with birch-twigs.