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.

I had gone directly back to my days in the nursery.

Restraint of any kind there was none, discipline as to time or emotions was undreamed of, and with it all a vitality, a warmth of heart, a sincerity and honesty that made that Otriad, perhaps, the most lovable company I have ever known.