“Look, Tommy, this nicely-dressed doll is Sonya. She’s a very good child, but a little naughty sometimes, and doesn’t want to eat her soup. This one is Natasha, Sonya’s daughter. She’s begun to learn already, and she knows almost all her letters. And this one is Matreshka. She was my very first doll. Look, she hasn’t got any nose and her head’s been stuck on, and she’s lost all her hair. But I can’t turn an old woman out of the house. Can I, Tommy? She used to be Sonya’s mother, but now she’s the cook. Let’s have a game, Tommy; you be the father and I’ll be the mother, and these shall be our children.”
Tommy agreed. He laughed, took Matreshka by the neck and put her in his mouth. But this was only a joke. After biting the doll a little he put her back again on the little girl’s lap, just a little wet and crumpled.
Then Nadya showed him a large picture-book, and explained:
“This is a horse, this is a canary, this is a gun.... Look, there’s a cage with a bird inside; here’s a pail, a looking-glass, a stove, a spade, a raven.... And here, just look, here’s an elephant. It’s not at all like you, is it? Is it possible an elephant could be so small, Tommy?”
Tommy thought that there were no elephants in the world as small as that. He didn’t seem to like that picture. He took hold of the edge of the page with his finger and turned it over.
It was dinner-time now, but the little girl couldn’t tear herself away from the elephant. The German came to the rescue.
“If you allow me, I will arrange it all. They can dine together.”
He ordered the elephant to sit down, and the obedient animal did so, shaking all the floor of the whole flat, making all the china on the sideboard jingle, and the people downstairs were sprinkled over with bits of plaster falling from the ceiling. The little girl sat opposite the elephant. The table was put between them. A tablecloth was tied round the elephant’s neck, and the new friends began their dinner. The little girl had chicken broth and cutlets, the elephant had various vegetables and salad. The little girl had a liqueur glass full of sherry, and the elephant had some warm water with a glassful of rum in it, and he sucked up this liquid through his trunk with great pleasure from a soup tureen. Then they had the sweet course—the little girl a cup of cocoa, and the elephant a tart, a walnut one this time. The German, meanwhile, sat with papa in the drawing-room, and, with as much pleasure as the elephant, drank beer, only in greater quantities.
After dinner some visitors came to see papa, and they were warned in the hall about the elephant so that they should not be frightened. At first they couldn’t believe it, but when they saw Tommy they pressed themselves close up against the door.
“Don’t be afraid, he’s good,” said the little girl soothingly.