It seemed to him that he had an answer to this question; but he had not time to formulate it to himself before he went into the nursery.
Kitty was standing with her sleeves tucked up over the baby in the bath. Hearing her husband’s footstep, she turned towards him, summoning him to her with her smile. With one hand she was supporting the fat baby that lay floating and sprawling on its back, while with the other she squeezed the sponge over him.
“Come, look, look!” she said, when her husband came up to her. “Agafea Mihalovna’s right. He knows us!”
Mitya had on that day given unmistakable, incontestable signs of recognizing all his friends.
As soon as Levin approached the bath, the experiment was tried, and it was completely successful. The cook, sent for with this object, bent over the baby. He frowned and shook his head disapprovingly. Kitty bent down to him, he gave her a beaming smile, propped his little hands on the sponge and chirruped, making such a queer little contented sound with his lips, that Kitty and the nurse were not alone in their admiration. Levin, too, was surprised and delighted.
The baby was taken out of the bath, drenched with water, wrapped in towels, dried, and after a piercing scream, handed to his mother.
“Well, I am glad you are beginning to love him,” said Kitty to her husband, when she had settled herself comfortably in her usual place, with the baby at her breast. “I am so glad! It had begun to distress me. You said you had no feeling for him.”
“No; did I say that? I only said I was disappointed.”
“What! disappointed in him?”