The only thing stranger than the fierceness of
their quarrels was the suddenness of their conclusion. I remember that
at dinner one day they fought a battle over the question of a clean
towel with a heat and vigour that was Homeric. A quarter of an hour
later I found them quietly talking together. Anna Petrovna was showing
Sister K---- a large and hideous photograph of her children.
"How sympathetic! How beautiful!" said Sister K----.
"But I thought you hated her?" I said afterwards in confusion to Anna
Petrovna.
"She was very sympathetic about my children," said Anna Petrovna
placidly.
Then, of course, Sister Sofia Antonovna, the sister with the red eyes,
made trouble when she could. She was, as I discovered afterwards, a
bitterly disappointed woman, having been deserted by her fiance only a
week before her marriage. That had happened three years ago and she
still loved him, so that she had her excuse for her view of the world.
My friends seemed to me, during those first weeks at Mittoevo, simply a
company of good-hearted, ill-disciplined children.
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