‘Signora, I did not go, I sent Luise,’
said a hoarse voice at the door, and a little bandy-legged
old man came hobbling into the room in a lavender
frock coat with black buttons, a high white cravat,
short nankeen trousers, and blue worsted stockings.
His diminutive little face was positively lost in
a mass of iron-grey hair. Standing up in all
directions, and falling back in ragged tufts, it gave
the old man’s figure a resemblance to a crested
hen—a resemblance the more striking, that
under the dark-grey mass nothing could be distinguished
but a beak nose and round yellow eyes.
‘Luise will run fast, and I can’t run,’
the old man went on in Italian, dragging his flat
gouty feet, shod in high slippers with knots of ribbon.
‘I’ve brought some water.’
In his withered, knotted fingers, he clutched a long
bottle neck.
‘But meanwhile Emil will die!’ cried the
girl, and holding out her hand to Sanin, ’O,
sir, O mein Herr! can’t you do something
for him?’
‘He ought to be bled—it’s an
apoplectic fit,’ observed the old man addressed
as Pantaleone.
Though Sanin had not the slightest notion of medicine,
he knew one thing for certain, that boys of fourteen
do not have apoplectic fits.
‘It’s a swoon, not a fit,’ he said,
turning to Pantaleone. ’Have you got any
brushes?’
The old man raised his little face. ‘Eh?’
‘Brushes, brushes,’ repeated Sanin in
German and in French. ‘Brushes,’
he added, making as though he would brush his clothes.
The little old man understood him at last.
‘Ah, brushes! Spazzette! to be sure we
have!’
‘Bring them here; we will take off his coat
and try rubbing him.’
‘Good ... Benone! And ought we not
to sprinkle water on his head?’
‘No ... later on; get the brushes now as quick
as you can.’
Pantaleone put the bottle on the floor, ran out and
returned at once with two brushes, one a hair-brush,
and one a clothes-brush. A curly poodle followed
him in, and vigorously wagging its tail, it looked
up inquisitively at the old man, the girl, and even
Sanin, as though it wanted to know what was the meaning
of all this fuss.
Sanin quickly took the boy’s coat off, unbuttoned
his collar, and pushed up his shirt-sleeves, and arming
himself with a brush, he began brushing his chest
and arms with all his might. Pantaleone as zealously
brushed away with the other—the hair-brush—at
his boots and trousers. The girl flung herself
on her knees by the sofa, and, clutching her head
in both hands, fastened her eyes, not an eyelash quivering,
on her brother.
Sanin rubbed on, and kept stealing glances at her.
Mercy! what a beautiful creature she was!
