In bad company

III

One of these debates had just died down. The elder folk had gone indoors, and through the open windows Stavruchenko's voice could be heard, describing a series of comic incidents that kept his listeners laughing merrily.
The young folk remained where they were, out in the garden. The student had spread his coat out on the grass and thrown himself down on it, with somewhat deliberate carelessness. His elder brother, the musician, sat beside Evelina, on the earth bank running around the house; and the cadet, buttoned up to the chin, sat next to him. Pyotr, too, sat on this seat, a little apart from the others, leaning against a window-sill. Pyotr's head was bowed. He was thinking about the debate he had just heard, which had interested him deeply.
"What did you think, Panna Evelina, of all that talk?" the elder of the brothers asked. "You never said a word, all through it."
"Why, it was all very fine—all you said to your father, I mean. Only..."
"Only what?"
Evelina did not at once answer. She laid her work down on her knees, smoothed it out carefully, and sat looking at it thoughtfully. It would have been difficult to say what she was thinking about: whether she should not have chosen a different canvas for the design she was embroidering, or—what answer to make to the question she had been asked.
All the young people were impatient to hear this answer. The student raised himself on his elbow and turned his face up to hers in lively curiosity. The musician sat watching her with calm, questioning eyes. Pyotr, too, tensed and lifted his head—then, after a moment, turned his face away.
"Only," Evelina continued, very low, still smoothing her embroidery on her knees, "it's not for every one to follow the same road in life. We have each our own destiny."
"Good Lord," the student exclaimed sharply, "what sober wisdom! Why, how old are you, Panna Evelina, if one may ask?"
"Seventeen," she answered simply—but immediately added, with naive, triumphant curiosity, "You thought I was much older, didn't you?"
The young men laughed.
"If I were asked your age," the musician said, "I'd be hard put to it to choose between thirteen and twenty-three. You seem a very child, at moments—truly! Yet you reason, at times, like a wise old lady."
"In serious matters one must reason seriously, Gavrilo Petrovich," the little woman declared mentorially; and she took up her embroidery.
A silence fell. Evelina's needle began to ply again. The visitors turned looks of curious interest on this tiny, yet so sober-minded young lady.