“See Russia!” I gasped. “Have you any idea how cold it is there, or will be soon?”
“Oh, yes,” she replied, “the Boston people told us ever so much and loaned us a book. Jack and I read up about it last night after you went to bed. You wondered why we were up so late. We read till midnight, and, like the girl who had been in Rome eight days and knew it thoroughly, we know Russia pretty well—St. Petersburg, I mean. That’s where we want to go—the place where your hat freezes to your head, your veil to your face, and if you shut your eyes when they are full of water your lids freeze together. That’s what some writer says, and I want to know if it is true, and see St. Isaac’s and the fortress, and the Winter Palace, and skate on the Neva. It’s such fun, the Hales said. That’s the name of the Boston family—Hale——”
“And I,” Jack began, coming forward with a map in his hand, “I want to see the czar and his wife and the grand dukes and all his folks, and the funny old coachmen, stuffed till they look like barrels, and I want an adventure with a gendarme and a nihilist, such as you had; and oh! I want to see Chance, if he is still alive. And I want to see the three houses so big that it takes you half an hour to walk past them. I don’t believe it, but I want to see them just the same. Russia will be jollier than Italy. Will you go? It will cost a lot, I know, but father will send us the money. I heard him tell you when we left home to let us see everything, as it was a part of our education, and we might never come again. Will you go?”
I was too much surprised to give a direct answer.
“I will think about it,” I said. “Go to the Louvre, or where you like, and when you come back I will tell you.”
“All right,” Jack said, in the tone of one who has won a victory, while Katy stooped and kissed me, saying:
“Auntie always means ‘yes’ when she says she will think about it; so, think hard and fast.”
Then they left me, and I was thinking hard—not so much, I am afraid, of the proposed trip to Russia as of the incidents of my former visit there, and I was surprised to find how my heart went out to that far-off city, which I had never expected to see again, and from which I had heard but once since my return to America three years ago. Not long after Christmas there had come to me a package containing eight photographs of Chance, looking just as he had looked when waiting for me at the hotel. There was also a letter from M. Seguin, which I read with an eagerness of which I was ashamed. It was written in a cramped back hand, not very plain, and began:
“Dear Miss Harding: I send you eight pictures of Chance—one for each of the Massachusetts women who were here last summer and made a little diversion in my life. I hope you will like the picture. I had some difficulty in making him keep still, until I spoke of you, when he quieted down at once and assumed the attitude he used to take when waiting for you. I believe that at the sound of your name he thought he was waiting again, and that you would soon appear. For three or four days after you left he went regularly each morning to the hotel, and sat for an hour or two watching everyone who came out, and when you did not come he started for the station where he had last seen you and where he waited until, growing discouraged, he came home and stretched himself out upon the floor with his head between his paws. Poor, disappointed Chance! I was sorry for him, for I knew how he felt.
“I see I have mentioned the dog first when I ought to have spoken of your friend, Nicol Patoff. He remains in statu quo, and I have given him up. I often see the old drosky driver, and two or three times have taken his rattletrap. He always asks for the little madame whom he drove first and last in the city, and says you were a ‘frisky little thing’! I think he meant nervous. Occasionally I see your hat on the head of that tangle-haired girl. Zaidee is her name. Perhaps you never knew. The last time I saw her she was sporting a long blue veil picked up in some quarter. Ursula has gone to Siberia to join her husband, and Carl, her nephew, has gone with her. He brought back the silver himself, and said he was going to turn over a new leaf and be a man, and all because you called off the dog and did not let him fall into the hands of Paul Strigoff. How they all hate that man! I gave Carl a ruble, more for your sake than his, although he has not a bad face. I saw them at the station when they went away. Ursula had a knot of tri-colored ribbon on her dress, such as you used to wear. I asked her where she got it. She bridled at once and replied: ‘I didn’t steal it. It was given me by the best and sweetest woman the Lord ever made.’ I nodded that I fully agreed with her, as she continued: ‘If you ever see her, tell her I have never forgotten her kindness to Carl, and I shall pray for her every day in Siberia.’