say I did it for my own amusement. I have reasons for believing that you’ve heard the story; but I wasn’t playing for my own amusement, it was for the sake of the children, because they couldn’t think of anything to do by themselves. But they’ve always got some silly tale. This is an awful town for gossip, I can tell you.”
“But what if you had been playing for your own amusement, what’s the harm?”
“Come, I say, for my own amusement! You don’t play horses, do you?”
“But you must look at it like this,” said Alyosha, smiling. “Grownup people go to the theater and there the adventures of all sorts of heroes are represented—sometimes there are robbers and battles, too—and isn’t that just the same thing, in a different form, of course? And young people’s games of soldiers or robbers in their