“That’s enough, mamma, enough about Herzenstube,” Lise laughed gayly. “Make haste with the lint and the lotion, mamma. That’s simply Goulard’s water, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I remember the name now, but it’s a splendid lotion. Would you believe it, mamma, on the way here he had a fight with the boys in the street, and it was a boy bit his finger, isn’t he a child, a child himself? Is he fit to be married after that? For only fancy, he wants to be married, mamma. Just think of him married, wouldn’t it be funny, wouldn’t it be awful?”
And Lise kept laughing her thin hysterical giggle, looking slyly at Alyosha.
“But why married, Lise? What makes you talk of such a thing? It’s quite out of place—and perhaps the boy was rabid.”
“Why, mamma! As though there were rabid boys!”
“Why not, Lise, as though I had said something stupid! Your boy might have been bitten by a mad dog and he would become mad and bite anyone near him. How well she has bandaged it, Alexey Fyodorovitch! I couldn’t have done it. Do you still feel the pain?”
“It’s nothing much now.”
“You don’t feel afraid of water?” asked Lise.
“Come, that’s enough, Lise, perhaps I really was rather too quick talking of the boy being rabid, and you pounced upon it at once. Katerina Ivanovna has only just heard that you are here, Alexey Fyodorovitch, she simply rushed at me, she’s dying to see you, dying!”
“Ach, mamma, go to them yourself. He can’t go just now, he is in too much pain.”