Having come back from the springs with Kitty, the prince, who had invited the colonel, Marya Evgenyevna and Varenka for coffee, ordered a table and chairs to be taken out to the garden under the chestnut tree and had lunch served there. The landlord and servants revived under the influence of his cheerfulness. They knew his generosity, and a half hour later the sick doctor from Hamburg who lived upstairs was looking enviously out the window at this cheerful and healthy Russian company gathered under the chestnut tree. In the shade of the trembling circles of leaves, by the table covered with a white cloth and set with coffeepots, bread, butter, cheese and cold game, sat the princess in a fichu with lilac ribbons, handing out cups and tartines. At the other end sat the prince, eating heartily and talking loudly and cheerily. The prince laid his purchases out beside him - carved boxes, knick-knacks, paper-knives of all kinds, which he had bought in quantity at each watering-place and gave to everybody, including the maid Lischen and the landlord, with whom he joked in his comically bad German, assuring him that it was not the waters that had cured Kitty but his excellent food, especially the prune soup. The princess chuckled at her husband’s Russian habits, but was more lively and cheerful than she had been during her entire stay at the spa. The colonel smiled, as always, at the prince’s jokes; but with regard to Europe, which he had studied attentively, as he thought, he was on the princess’s side. The good-natured Marya Evgenyevna rocked with laughter at everything amusing that the prince said, and Varenka - something Kitty had not seen before - melted into weak but infectious laughter, provoked in her by the prince’s witticisms.
All this cheered Kitty up, yet she could not help being preoccupied. She could not solve the problem her father had unwittingly posed for her by his merry view of her friends and the life she had come to like so much. To this problem was added the change in her relations with the Petrovs, which had shown itself so obviously and unpleasantly today. Everyone was merry, but Kitty was unable to be merry, and this pained her still more. She had the same feeling as in childhood, when she was punished by being locked in her room and heard her sisters’ merry laughter.
‘Well, what did you buy such a mountain of things for?’ said the princess, smiling and handing her husband a cup of coffee.
‘You go for a walk, and you come to a shop, and they beg you to buy something:
‘It’s only out of boredom,’ said the princess.
‘Certainly it’s out of boredom. Such boredom, my dear, that you don’t know what to do with yourself.’
‘How can you be bored, Prince? There’s so much that’s interesting in Germany now,’ said Marya Evgenyevna.
‘But I know all the interesting things: I know prune soup, I know pea sausages. I know it all.’
‘No, like it or not, Prince, their institutions are interesting,’ said the colonel.
‘What’s so interesting? They’re all pleased as Punch: they’ve beaten everybody.35 Well, but what’s there for me to be pleased about? I didn’t beat anybody, I just have to take my boots off myself and put them outside the door myself. In the morning I get up, dress myself at once, go downstairs and drink vile tea. Home is quite another thing! You wake up without hurrying, get angry at something, grumble a little, come properly to your senses, think things over, don’t have to hurry.’
‘But time is money, you’re forgetting that,’ said the colonel.
‘Which time! There are times when you’d give a whole month away for fifty kopecks, and others when you wouldn’t give up half an hour for any price. Right, Katenka? Why are you so dull?’
‘I’m all right.’
‘Where are you going? Stay longer,’ he said to Varenka.
‘I must go home,’ said Varenka, getting up and again dissolving in laughter.
Having recovered, she said good-bye and went into the house to get her hat. Kitty followed her. Even Varenka looked different to her now. She was not worse, but she was different from what she had formerly imagined her to be.
‘Ah, I haven’t laughed like that for a long time!’ said Varenka, collecting her parasol and bag. ‘He’s so nice, your father!’
Kitty was silent.
‘When shall we see each other?’ asked Varenka.
‘I will,’ replied Varenka. ‘They’re leaving, so I promised to come and help them pack.’
‘Well, I’ll come, too.’
‘No, why should you?’
‘Why not? why not? why not?’ Kitty said, opening her eyes wide and taking hold of Varenka’s parasol to keep her from leaving. ‘No, wait, why not?’
‘It’s just that your father has come, and, then, they’re embarrassed with you.’
‘No, tell me, why don’t you want me to visit the Petrovs often? You don’t want it, do you? Why?’
