“They must have a father,” both decided.
Vania and Nina debated for a long time as to who should be the father of the kittens. At last their choice fell upon a large dark-red horse with a broken tail who had been thrown into a cupboard under the stairs and there lay awaiting his end in company with other rubbish and broken toys. This horse they dragged forth and set up beside the box.
“Mind now!” the children admonished him. “Stand there and see they behave themselves!”
Shortly before dinner Vania was sitting at the table in his father’s study dreamily watching a kitten that lay squirming on the blotting-paper under the lamp. His eyes were following each movement of the little creature and he was trying to force first a pencil and then a match into its mouth. Suddenly his father appeared beside the table as if he had sprung from the floor.
“What’s that?” Vania heard him ask in an angry voice.
“It’s—it’s a little kitty, papa.”
“I’ll show you a little kitty! Look what you’ve done, you bad boy, you’ve messed up the whole blotter!”
To Vania’s intense surprise, his papa did not share his affection for kittens. Instead of going into raptures and rejoicing over it with him, he pulled Vania’s ear and shouted:
“Stepan! Come and take this nasty thing away!”
At dinner, too, a scandal occurred. During the second course the family suddenly heard a faint squeaking. A search for the cause was made and a kitten was discovered under Nina’s apron.