XVI. Verse-Making - Page 2

completed a twelve-couplet congratulatory ode, and sat down to the table in our school-room to copy them out on vellum.

Two sheets were soon spoiled--not because I found it necessary to alter anything (the verses seemed to me perfect), but because, after the third line, the tail-end of each successive one would go curving upward and making it plain to all the world that the whole thing had been written with a want of adherence to the horizontal--a thing which I could not bear to see.

The third sheet also came out crooked, but I determined to make it do. In my verses I congratulated Grandmamma, wished her many happy returns, and concluded thus:

Endeavouring you to please and cheer, We love you like our Mother dear."

This seemed to me not bad, yet it offended my car somehow.

"Lo-ve you li-ike our Mo-ther dear," I repeated to myself. "What other rhyme could I use instead of 'dear'? Fear? Steer? Well, it must go at that. At least the verses are better than Karl Ivanitch's."

Accordingly I added the last verse to the rest. Then I went into our bedroom and recited the whole poem aloud with much feeling and gesticulation. The verses were altogether guiltless of metre, but I did not stop to consider that. Yet the last one displeased me more than ever. As I sat on my bed I thought:

"Why on earth did I write 'like our Mother dear'? She is not here, and therefore she need never have been mentioned. True, I love and respect Grandmamma, but she is not quite the same as-- Why did I write that? What did I go and tell a lie for? They may be verses only, yet I needn't quite have done that."

At that moment the tailor arrived with some new clothes for us.

"Well, so be it!" I said in much vexation as I crammed the verses hastily under my pillow and ran down to adorn myself in the new Moscow garments.

They fitted marvellously-both the brown jacket with yellow buttons (a garment made skin-tight and not "to allow room for growth," as in the country) and the black trousers (also close- fitting so that they displayed the figure and lay smoothly over the boots).

"At last I have real trousers on!" I thought as I looked at my legs with the utmost satisfaction. I concealed from every one the fact that the new clothes were horribly tight and uncomfortable, but, on the contrary, said that, if there were a fault, it was that they were not tight enough. For a long while I stood before the looking-glass as I combed my elaborately pomaded head, but, try as I would, I could not reduce the topmost hairs on the crown to order. As soon as ever I left off combing them, they sprang up again and radiated in different directions, thus giving my face a ridiculous expression.

Karl Ivanitch was dressing in another room, and I heard some one bring him his blue frockcoat and under-linen. Then at the door