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.