They all shout out the numbers in turn, except Sonya and Alyosha.  To vary the monotony, they have invented in the course of time a number of synonyms and comic nicknames.  Seven, for instance, is called the “ovenrake,” eleven the “sticks,” seventy-seven “Semyon Semyonitch,” ninety “grandfather,” and so on.  The game is going merrily.

“Thirty-two,” cries Grisha, drawing the little yellow cylinders out of his father’s cap.  “Seventeen!  Ovenrake!  Twenty-eight!  Lay them straight. . . .”

Anya sees that Andrey has let twenty-eight slip.  At any other time she would have pointed it out to him, but now when her vanity lies in the saucer with the kopecks, she is triumphant.

“Twenty-three!” Grisha goes on, “Semyon Semyonitch!  Nine!”

“A beetle, a beetle,” cries Sonya, pointing to a beetle running across the table.  “Aie!”

“Don’t kill it,” says Alyosha, in his deep bass, “perhaps it’s got children . . . .”

Sonya follows the black beetle with her eyes and wonders about its children:  what tiny little beetles they must be!

“Forty-three!  One!” Grisha goes on, unhappy at the thought that Anya has already made two fours.  “Six!”

“Game!  I have got the game!” cries Sonya, rolling her eyes coquettishly and giggling.

The players’ countenances lengthen.

“Must make sure!” says Grisha, looking with hatred at Sonya.

Exercising his rights as a big boy, and the cleverest, Grisha takes upon himself to decide.  What he wants, that they do.  Sonya’s reckoning is slowly and carefully verified, and to the great regret of her fellow players, it appears that she has not cheated.  Another game is begun.

“I did see something yesterday!” says Anya, as though to herself.  “Filipp Filippitch turned his eyelids inside out somehow and his eyes looked red and dreadful, like an evil spirit’s.”

“I saw it too,” says Grisha.  “Eight!  And a boy at our school can move his ears.  Twenty-seven!”

Andrey looks up at Grisha, meditates, and says: 

“I can move my ears too. . . .”

“Well then, move them.”

Andrey moves his eyes, his lips, and his fingers, and fancies that his ears are moving too.  Everyone laughs.

“He is a horrid man, that Filipp Filippitch,” sighs Sonya.  “He came into our nursery yesterday, and I had nothing on but my chemise . . .  And I felt so improper!”

“Game!” Grisha cries suddenly, snatching the money from the saucer.  “I’ve got the game!  You can look and see if you like.”

The cook’s son looks up and turns pale.

“Then I can’t go on playing any more,” he whispers.

“Why not?”

“Because . . . because I have got no more money.”

“You can’t play without money,” says Grisha.

Andrey ransacks his pockets once more to make sure.  Finding nothing in them but crumbs and a bitten pencil, he drops the corners of his mouth and begins blinking miserably.  He is on the point of crying. . . .