away; Lubotchka ran right up to her and flung herself on her neck.

"You dear, darling, precious," she said, kissing her face and her
neck. "Let us go and have tea on the island!"

"On the island, on the island!" said the precisely similar Nata and
Vata, both at once, without a smile.

"But it's going to rain, my dears."

"It's not, it's not," cried Lubotchka with a woebegone face. "They've
all agreed to go. Dear! darling!"

"They are all getting ready to have tea on the island," said Pyotr
Dmitritch, coming up. "See to arranging things. . . . We will all
go in the boats, and the samovars and all the rest of it must be
sent in the carriage with the servants."

He walked beside his wife and gave her his arm. Olga Mihalovna had
a desire to say something disagreeable to her husband, something
biting, even about her dowry perhaps--the crueller the better,
she felt. She thought a little, and said:

"Why is it Count Alexey Petrovitch hasn't come? What a pity!"

"I am very glad he hasn't come," said Pyotr Dmitritch, lying. "I'm
sick to death of that old lunatic."

"But yet before dinner you were expecting him so eagerly!"