"Dear boy" (these words were always written in English), so ran the last
letter from that house received in London,--"Get yourself driven to the
only inn in the place, dine as well as you can, and some time in the
evening my own confidential servant, factotum and major-domo, a Mr. V.S.
(I warn you he is of noble extraction), will present himself before you,
reporting the arrival of the small sledge which will take you here on
the next day. I send with him my heaviest fur, which I suppose with such
overcoats as you may have with you will keep you from freezing on the
road."

Sure enough, as I was dining, served by a Hebrew waiter, in an enormous
barn-like bedroom with a freshly painted floor, the door opened and, in
a travelling costume of long boots, big sheep-skin cap and a short coat
girt with a leather belt, the Mr. V.S. (of noble extraction), a man of
about thirty-five, appeared with an air of perplexity on his open and
moustachioed countenance. I got up from the table and greeted him in
Polish, with, I hope, the right shade of consideration demanded by his
noble blood and his confidential position. His face cleared up in a
wonderful way. It appeared that, notwithstanding my uncle's earnest
assurances, the good fellow had remained in doubt of our understanding
each other. He imagined I would talk to him in some foreign language. I
was told that his last words on getting into the sledge to come to meet
me shaped an anxious exclamation:

"Well! Well! Here I am going, but God only knows how I am to make myself
understood to our master's nephew."

We understood each other very well from the first. He took charge of
me as if I were not quite of age. I had a delightful boyish feeling