As she bade them good-bye she kissed them kindly and said:
"You're charming, simple girls. I thought at first that you were—forgive the rude word—wantons."
The sisters laughed gaily. Liudmilla said:
"No, we're just happy girls with sharp little tongues and that's why we're not liked by some of the local geese."
When she returned from the Routilovs Sasha's aunt said nothing to him. He met her, feeling rather frightened and embarrassed and he looked at her cautiously and attentively. After a long deliberation with Kokovkina the aunt decided:
"I must see the Head-Master again."
That same day Liudmilla went to see Khripatch. She sat for some time in the drawing-room with the Head-Master's wife and then announced that she had come to see Nikolai Vassilyevitch on business.
An animated conversation took place in Khripatch's study—not because they had much to say to one another but because they liked to chatter. And they talked rapidly to each other, Khripatch with his dry, crackling volubility, Liudmilla with her gentle, resonant prattle. With the irresistible persuasiveness of falsehood, she poured out to Khripatch her half-false story of her relations with Sasha Pilnikov. Her chief motives were, of course, her sympathy with the boy who was suffering from this coarse suspicion, her desire to take the place of Sasha's absent family. And finally he was such a charming, unspoiled boy. Liudmilla even cried a little and her swift tears rolled down her cheeks to her half-smiling lips, giving her an extraordinary attractiveness.
"I have grown to love him like a brother," she said. "He is a fine, lovable boy. He appreciated affection and he kissed my hands."