"I tell you what. I can raise the money for you," she said, with a gesture of sudden resolution. "How much is it?"
When I said, forlornly, that it would come to about eighty rubles, she declared, gravely: "That's all right. I shall get it for you. Only, say nothing to mother about it." I thought myself in a flurry of joy over this windfall, but a little later, when I was left to myself, I became aware that the flurry I was in was of quite a different nature. When I tried to think of America I found that my ambition in that direction had lost its former vitality
I was deeply in love with Matilda
CHAPTER III
SHE continued to treat me in a patronizing, playful way; but we were supposed to be great friends and I asked myself no questions.
"The money is assured," she once announced. "You shall get it in a few days.
You may begin to pack your great baggage," she jested
My heart sank within me, but I feigned exultation
"Do you deserve it, pious soul that you are?" she laughed. And casting a glance at my side-locks, she added: "I do wish you would cut off those horrid things of yours. You won't take them to America, will you?"
I smiled. Small as was my stock of information of the New World, I knew enough of it to understand, in a general way, that side-locks were out of place there