"Oh, well, that's all very much exaggerated. And you can always find something to eat if you are not too dainty. And as to doctors, you apparently do me the honour of having some confidence in me?"
"Oh, Krondide Ivanovitch, you! I believe in you as I do in God!... All my hope is in you!"
"Well, then, you see no other doctor will be required. I myself will attend Marie Ilinishna." ...
"What, you will be there? Oh, that alters the question.... Once you are there.... When will you be there?"
"At the beginning of the season; you know, where the ladies are, there I am to be found too. And all the ladies go there. Jeleznovodsk is called the ladies' spring."
Mimotchka brightens up a little. She would like to go to the Caucasus. Nettie had spent last summer at Kislovodsk and had come back with very pleasant remembrances of it. There she had completely emancipated herself, and from there she had brought back her present adorer. And, sitting here, all at once Mimotchka recognises clearly for the first time exactly what she wants. She wants to go somewhere alone. She will take her maid Katia with her and start off, and the others can all do what they like. The doctor inwardly makes a note of this brightening up, and, glancing occasionally at Mimotchka, continues giving mamma some indispensable information about Jeleznovodsk. Mimotchka is to drink iron water and take baths for two months, and then go for another month to Kislovodsk to, so to say, polish off, and by the autumn she will be so much better that it will be quite impossible to recognise her.
"God grant it, God grant it!" says mamma, with a sad, doubting smile, and delicately slipping a little pinkish paper[2] into the doctor's hand, she follows Mimotchka out of the consulting-room, letting the next patient pass in in his turn.
[2] A ten-rouble bank-note, equal to about a guinea in English money.
"Well, Mimi," says mamma, taking her seat in the carriage by the side of her daughter, "what do you say to his idea? I think we ought to go. As he is going to be there himself.... Will you go?"
Mimotchka is silent. Her momentary animation has again changed into an expression of suffering and apathy. Mamma looks at her and is silent for five minutes, at the end of which she repeats her question.