"You might have knocked me flat down with a birch twig," said Uncle Volodia afterwards, when talking it over with Adam. "The idea of thanking us for what was nothing at all but a real pleasure! He's a good man, the Barin!"
The springtime found the children and their father settled once more in their old home, with Adam, Var-Vara, and Alexis; and life flowing on very much as it had always done, except for the absence of the gentle, motherly, Anna Olsheffsky.
Uncle Volodia continued to look after his shop with zeal; and the two rooms with the gilt furniture, which Mr. Olsheffsky had insisted on his not removing, became objects of the greatest pride and joy to him.
He never allowed anyone but himself to dust them, and in spare moments he polished the looking-glass with a piece of leather, kept carefully for the purpose in a cigar box.
"It's a great pleasure to me," he remarked one day to a neighbour, "to think that when I leave this house to Boris Andreïevitch—as I intend to do, after old Maria—it will have two rooms that are fit for anyone of the family to sleep in. He'll never have to be ashamed of them!"
On his seventieth birthday, Elena—now grown a tall slim young lady, with grave brown eyes—persuaded him that it was really time to take a little rest, and enjoy himself.
He thereupon sold his stock, and devoted himself to gardening in the yard at the back of his house; where he would sit on summer evenings smoking his pipe, in the midst of giant dahlias and sunflowers.
Here Daria often came with Boris and Tulipan; and sitting by Uncle Volodia's side, listened to the well-known stories she had heard since her babyhood—always ending up with the same words in a tone of great solemnity—
"And this, children, is a true story, every word of it!"