He was beaming with pride. He explained to everybody how it had been
done. He walked round the table and stood, for an instant, with his hand
on Vera Michailovna's shoulder. The pies with fish and cabbage in them
were handed round. He jested with the old great-aunt. He shouted in her
ear:
"Now, Aunt Isabella... some wine. Good for you, you know--keep you
young...."
"No, no, no..." she protested, laughing and shaking her earrings, with
tears in her eyes. But he filled her glass and she drank it and coughed,
still protesting.
"Thank you, thank you," she chattered as Bohun dived under the table and
found her bag for her. I saw that he did not like the crayfish soup,
and was distressed because he had so large a helping.
He blushed and looked at his plate, then began again to eat and stopped.
"Don't you like it?" one of the giggling girls asked him. "But it's very
good. Have another 'Pie!'"
The meal continued. There were little suckling pigs with "Kasha," a kind
of brown buckwheat. Every one was gayer and gayer. Now all talked at
once, and no one listened to anything that any one else said.
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