“Well, young violet, how are you? All right?” he said in a whisper, coming up to me and taking my hand. Then, in answer to my question, “Oh, I’m splendid today, I feel like a boy of thirteen⁠—I want to play at horses and climb trees.”

“Is it wild ecstasy?” I asked, looking into his laughing eyes, and feeling that the “wild ecstasy” was infecting me.

“Yes,” he answered, winking and checking a smile. “But I don’t see why you need hit Katerína Kárlovna on the nose.”

With my eyes on him I had gone on waving the branch, without noticing that I had knocked the handkerchief off Kátya’s face and was now brushing her with the leaves. I laughed.

“She will say she was awake all the time,” I whispered, as if not to awake Kátya; but that was not my real reason⁠—it was only that I liked to whisper to him.