Maksi.

"Why don't you let in little Maksi?" cried the old gentleman, when he
heard him. "Open the door for little Maksi; don't you know that he is
not tall enough to reach the door-handle? Why don't you let him come to
me when he wants to come?"

At that moment the footman opened the door and the little family prince
bounded in. It was a pale little mouldy sort of flower, with red eyes
and a cornerless mouth like a carp, but with the authentic family nose
and the appurtenances thereof, which took up so much room as to
seriously imperil the prospects of the rest of the head growing in
proportion. The little favourite was wearing a complete Uhlan costume,
even the four-cornered chako was stuck on the side of his head; he was
flourishing a zinc sword and grumbling bitterly.

"What's the matter with little Maksi? Has anybody been annoying him?"

Grandpapa succeeded at last in making out that on running out Maksi had
tripped over his sword, that his tutor had wanted to take it away, that
Maksi had thereupon drawn his weapon and made the aggressor's hand smart
with it, and that finally he had fled for refuge to grandpapa's room as
the only place where he was free from the persecutions of his
instructors.

Grandpapa, in a terrible to do, began to question him: "Come here! Where
did you hit yourself? On the head, eh! Let us see! Why, it is swollen
up--quite red in fact! Put some opodeldoc on it! Clementina, do you
hear?--some opodeldoc for Maksi!" So the family medicament had to be
fetched at once; but Maksi, snatching it from the worthy spinster's