“Well, well,” said Mitya with artless astonishment. “So you collect nothing! That’s very curious.”
Grisha felt ashamed that he was not collecting anything, and that he had disclosed the fact.
“I, too, must collect something!” he thought to himself, but he could not decide to say this aloud.
Mitya sat a little longer, then left him. Grisha felt a relief. But a new ordeal was in store for him.
The nurse engaged by the Semiboyarinovs for their youngest son was strolling along the garden paths with the one-year-old child in her arms. She wished to rest, and chose the same bench upon which Grisha was sitting. He again felt uneasy. He looked straight before him, and could not even decide to move away from the nurse to the other end of the bench.
The infant’s attention soon became drawn to Grisha’s protruding ears, and he leant forward towards one of them. The nurse, a robust, red-cheeked woman, concluded that Grisha would not mind. She brought her charge nearer to Grisha, and the pink infant caught Grisha’s ear with his fat little hand. Grisha was paralysed with confusion, but could not decide to protest. The child, laughing loudly and merrily, now let go Grisha’s ear, now caught hold of it again. The red-cheeked nurse, who enjoyed the game not less than the infant, kept on repeating: “Let’s go for him! Let’s give it to him!”
One of the boys saw the scene, and told the other boys that little Georgik was obstreperous with the quiet boy who was sitting so long on the bench. The children gathered round Georgik and Grisha, and laughed noisily. Grisha tried to show that he didn’t mind, that he felt no pain, and that he also enjoyed the fun. But it grew harder and harder for him to smile, and he had a very strong desire to cry. He knew that he ought not to cry, that it was a disgrace, and he restrained himself with an effort.
Happily he was soon delivered. The blue-eyed Lydochka, upon hearing the children’s boisterous laughter, went to see what had happened. She reproached the nurse: “Aren’t you ashamed to go on like this?”
She herself had difficulty to keep from laughing at Grisha’s pitiful, confused face. But she restrained herself, and upheld her dignity as a grown young woman before the nurse and the children.
The nurse rose and said, laughing: “Georginka did it quite gently. The boy himself didn’t say that it hurt him.”