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The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
page 40 of 245 (16%)
over-boots. He feels hot and stifled, and now, too, the rollicking
April sunshine is beating straight in his face, and making his
eyelids tingle.

The whole of his clumsy, timidly and uncertainly stepping little
figure expresses the utmost bewilderment.

Hitherto Grisha has known only a rectangular world, where in one
corner stands his bed, in the other nurse's trunk, in the third a
chair, while in the fourth there is a little lamp burning. If one
looks under the bed, one sees a doll with a broken arm and a drum;
and behind nurse's trunk, there are a great many things of all
sorts: cotton reels, boxes without lids, and a broken Jack-a-dandy.
In that world, besides nurse and Grisha, there are often mamma and
the cat. Mamma is like a doll, and puss is like papa's fur-coat,
only the coat hasn't got eyes and a tail. From the world which is
called the nursery a door leads to a great expanse where they have
dinner and tea. There stands Grisha's chair on high legs, and on
the wall hangs a clock which exists to swing its pendulum and chime.
From the dining-room, one can go into a room where there are red
arm-chairs. Here, there is a dark patch on the carpet, concerning
which fingers are still shaken at Grisha. Beyond that room is still
another, to which one is not admitted, and where one sees glimpses
of papa--an extremely enigmatical person! Nurse and mamma are
comprehensible: they dress Grisha, feed him, and put him to bed,
but what papa exists for is unknown. There is another enigmatical
person, auntie, who presented Grisha with a drum. She appears and
disappears. Where does she disappear to? Grisha has more than once
looked under the bed, behind the trunk, and under the sofa, but she
was not there.
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