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I was so overcome that I almost dropped the watch, and, utterly disconcerted, my face painfully flushing crimson, I fell to fumbling about my waistcoat with it, unable to find my pocket.

David looked at me and, as usual, smiled without speaking.

“What’s the matter?” he brought out at last. “You imagined I didn’t know you had your watch again? I saw it the very day you brought it back.”

“I assure you,” I began, almost on the point of tears….

David shrugged his shoulders.

“The watch is yours, you are free to do what you like with it.”

Saying these cruel words, he went out.

I was overwhelmed with despair. This time there could be no doubt! David certainly despised me.

I could not leave it so.

“I will show him,” I thought, clenching my teeth, and at once with a firm step I went into the passage, found our page-boy, Yushka, and presented him with the watch!

Yushka would have refused it, but I declared that if he did not take the watch from me I would smash it that very minute, trample it under foot, break it to bits and throw it in the cesspool! He thought a moment, giggled, and took the watch. I went back to our room and seeing David reading there, I told him what I had done.

David did not take his eyes off the page and, again shrugging his shoulder and smiling to himself, repeated that the watch was mine and that I was free to do what I liked with it.

But it seemed to me that he already despised me a little less.

I was fully persuaded that I should never again expose myself to the reproach of weakness of character, for the watch, the disgusting present from my disgusting godfather, had suddenly grown so distasteful to me that I was quite incapable of understanding how I could have regretted it, how I could have begged for it back from the wretched Trofimitch, who had, moreover, the right to think that he had treated me with generosity.

Several days passed…. I remember that on one of them the great news reached our town that the Emperor Paul was dead and his son Alexandr, of whose graciousness and humanity there were such favourable rumours, had ascended the throne. This news excited David intensely: the possibility of seeing–of shortly seeing–his father occurred to him at once. My father was delighted, too.

“They will bring back all the exiles from Siberia now and I expect brother Yegor will not be forgotten,” he kept repeating, rubbing his hands, coughing and, at the same time, seeming rather nervous.

David and I at once gave up working and going to the high school; we did not even go for walks but sat in a corner counting and reckoning in how many months, in how many weeks, in how many days “brother Yegor” ought to come back and where to write to him and how to go to meet him and in what way we should begin to live afterwards. “Brother Yegor” was an architect: David and I decided that he ought to settle in Moscow and there build big schools for poor people and we would go to be his assistants. The watch, of course, we had completely forgotten; besides, David had new cares…. Of them I will speak later, but the watch was destined to remind us of its existence again.

VII

One morning we had only just finished lunch–I was sitting alone by the window thinking of my uncle’s release–outside there was the steam and glitter of an April thaw–when all at once my aunt, Pelageya Petrovna, walked into the room. She was at all times restless and fidgetty, she spoke in a shrill voice and was always waving her arms about; on this occasion she simply pounced on me.

“Go along, go to your father at once, sir!” she snapped out. “What pranks have you been up to, you shameless boy! You will catch it, both of you. Nastasey Nastasyeitch has shown up all your tricks! Go along, your father wants you…. Go along this very minute.”