‘Well, you are brave!’ I cried.
‘Where is the bravery in that? It wasn’t a venomous spider.’
‘One can see you are as well up in Natural History as ever, but I couldn’t have held it in my hand.’
‘There’s nothing to be afraid of!’ repeated Vera Nikolaevna.
Natasha looked at us both in silence, and laughed.
‘How like your mother she is!’ I remarked.
‘Yes,’ rejoined Vera Nikolaevna with a smile of pleasure, ‘it is a great happiness to me. God grant she may be like her, not in face only!’
We were called in to dinner, and after dinner I went away.
N.B.—The dinner was very good and well-cooked, an observation in parenthesis for you, you gourmand!