Fathers and Sons

"Of course, I ought to be ashamed," answered Nikolai Petrovich, turning redder and redder.

"Enough of that, Daddy, please don't..." Arkady smiled affectionately. "What a thing to apologize for," he thought to himself, and his heart was filled with a feeling of indulgent tenderness for his kind, soft-hearted father, mixed with a sense of secret superiority. "Please stop that," he repeated once more, instinctively enjoying the awareness of his own more emancipated outlook.

Nikolai Petrovich looked at his son through the fingers of the hand with which he was again rubbing his forehead, and a pang seized his heart... but he immediately reproached himself for it.

"Here are our own meadows at last," he remarked after a long silence.

"And that is our forest over there, isn't it?" asked Arkady.

"Yes. But I have sold it. This year they will cut it down for timber."

"Why did you sell it?"

"We need the money; besides, that land will be taken over by the