“It’s all right! Splendid!” cried he when within ten paces of his wife, in answer to the anxious expression on her face. “Just think, we went together to those bushes, and he looked and looked at them—he even plucked a leaf and chewed it. ‘What sort of a tree is this?’ says he.”
“‘I don’t know, your Excellency,’ said I.
“‘It’s a little birch, I suppose,’ says he.
“‘Yes, probably, your Excellency.’”
Then he turned to me and held out his hand.
“‘I beg your pardon, lieutenant,’ he says. ‘I must be getting old, that I didn’t remember those bushes.’ He’s a fine man, that professor, and he knows a lot. I felt quite sorry to deceive him. He’s one of the best professors we have. His learning is simply wonderful. And how quick and accurate he is in marking the plans—marvellous!”
But this meant little to Vera. She wanted to hear over and over again exactly what the professor had said about the bushes. She was interested in the smallest details—the expression on the professor’s face, the tone of his voice when he said he must be growing old, exactly how Kolya felt....
They went home together as if there had been no one in the street except themselves, holding each other by the hand and laughing at nothing. The passers-by stopped to look at them; they seemed such a strange couple.
Never before had Nikolai Yevgrafovitch enjoyed his dinner so much as on that day. After dinner, when Vera brought a glass of tea to him in the study, husband and wife suddenly looked at one another, and both laughed.
“What are you laughing at?” asked Vera.