He behaved quite unlike the neighbours who had visited us after my mother’s death. They had thought it necessary to be silent when they sat with us, and to shed tears. He, on the contrary, was cheerful and talkative, and said not a word about my mother, so that this indifference seemed strange to me at first and even improper on the part of so close a friend. But I understood later that what seemed indifference was sincerity, and I felt grateful for it. In the evening Kátya poured out tea, sitting in her old place in the drawing room, where she used to sit in my mother’s lifetime; our old butler Grigóri had hunted out one of my father’s pipes and brought it to him; and he began to walk up and down the room as he used to do in past days.
“How many terrible changes there are in this house, when one thinks of it all!” he said, stopping in his walk.
“Yes,” said Kátya with a sigh; and then she put the lid on the samovar and looked at him, quite ready to burst out crying.
“I suppose you remember your father?” he said, turning to me.
“Not clearly,” I answered.
“How happy you would have been together now!” he added in a low voice, looking thoughtfully at my face above the eyes. “I was very fond of him,” he added in a still lower tone, and it seemed to me that his eyes were shining more than usual.
“And now God has taken her too!” said Kátya; and at once she laid her napkin on the teapot, took out her handkerchief, and began to cry.
“Yes, the changes in this house are terrible,” he repeated, turning away. “Sónya, show me your toys,” he added after a little and went off to the parlour. When he had gone, I looked at Kátya with eyes full of tears.
“What a splendid friend he is!” she said. And, though he was no relation, I did really feel a kind of warmth and comfort in the sympathy of this