Crossword-Solution: LUBA 4 letters, 5 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 6

Quiet, silent and persistent in his childish desires, he spent all his days over his playthings, with Mayakin’s daughter, Luba, quietly looked after by one of the kinswomen, a stout, pock-marked old maid, who was, for some reason or other, nicknamed “Buzya.” She was a dull, somewhat timid creature; and even to the children she spoke in a low voice, in words of monosyllables.

One day when he was at Mayakin’s, Luba called him to go for a walk in the garden, and there, walking by his side, asked him with a grimace on her face: “Why are you so unsociable? You never talk about anything.” “What shall I talk about, since I know nothing!” said Foma, plainly.

Sitting somewhere in a dark corner of the garden or lying in bed, he conjured up before him the images of the fairy-tale princesses--they appeared with the face of Luba and of other young ladies of his acquaintance, noiselessly floating before him in the twilight and staring into his eyes with enigmatic looks.

Foma did not like Mayakin’s daughter, and since he had learned from his father of Mayakin’s intention to marry him to Luba, the young Gordyeeff began to shun her.

But after his father’s death he was almost every day at the Mayakins, and somehow Luba said to him one day: “I am looking at you, and, do you know?--you do not resemble a merchant at all.” “Nor do you look like a merchant’s daughter,” said Foma, and looked at her suspiciously.