pretends not to notice it. Disgusting brute! And his dressing-gown and
cap and tassel too--they are all of them disgusting."

While I was thus inwardly venting my wrath upon Karl Ivanitch, he had
passed to his own bedstead, looked at his watch (which hung suspended in
a little shoe sewn with bugles), and deposited the fly-flap on a nail,
then, evidently in the most cheerful mood possible, he turned round to
us.

"Get up, children! It is quite time, and your mother is already in the
drawing-room," he exclaimed in his strong German accent. Then he crossed
over to me, sat down at my feet, and took his snuff-box out of his
pocket. I pretended to be asleep. Karl Ivanitch sneezed, wiped his
nose, flicked his fingers, and began amusing himself by teasing me and
tickling my toes as he said with a smile, "Well, well, little lazy one!"

For all my dread of being tickled, I determined not to get out of bed
or to answer him, but hid my head deeper in the pillow, kicked out with
all my strength, and strained every nerve to keep from laughing.

"How kind he is, and how fond of us!" I thought to myself. "Yet to think
that I could be hating him so just now!"

I felt angry, both with myself and with Karl Ivanitch, I wanted to laugh
and to cry at the same time, for my nerves were all on edge.

"Leave me alone, Karl!" I exclaimed at length, with tears in my eyes, as
I raised my head from beneath the bed-clothes.

Karl Ivanitch was taken aback, He left off tickling my feet, and asked