lip hang down and with a mist coming over her faded eyes. "We keep
our Birdie--she is in Fleisher's high school--we purposely keep her in town, in a
respectable family. You. understand, it is awkward, after all. And all of a sudden she
brings such words and expressions from the high school that I just simply turned all red."
"Honest to God, Annochka turned all red," confirms Isaiah Savvich.
"You'll turn red, all right!" warmly agrees the inspector. "Yes, yes, yes, I understand you
fully. But, my God, where are we going! Where are we only going? I ask you, what are
these revolutionaries and all these various students, or... what-you-may-call-'ems? ...
trying to attain? And let them put the blame on none but themselves. Corruption is
everywhere, morality is falling, there is no respect for parents. They ought to be shot."
"Well, now, the day before yesterday we had a case," Zociya mixes in bustlingly. "A
certain guest came, a stout man..."
"Drop it!" Emma Edwardovna, who was listening to the inspector, piously nodding with
her head bowed to one side, cuts her short in the jargon of the brothels. "You'd better go
and see about breakfast for the young ladies."
"And not a single person can be relied upon," continues the proprietress grumblingly.
"Not a servant but what she's a stiff, a faker. And all the girls ever think about is their
lovers. Just so's they may have their own pleasure. But about their duties they don't even
think."
There is an awkward silence. Some one knocks on the door. A thin, feminine voice
speaks on the other side of the door:
"Housekeeper, dear, take the money and be kind enough to give me the stamps. Pete's
gone."
The inspector gets up and adjusts his sabre.
"Well, it's time I was going to work. Best regards, Anna Markovna. Best wishes, Isaiah
Savvich."
"Perhaps you'll have one more little glass for a stirrup cup?" the nearly blind Isaiah
Savvich thrusts himself over the table.
"Tha-ank you. I can't. Full to the gills. Honoured, I'm sure! ..."
"Thanks for your company. Drop in some time."
"Always glad to be your guest, sir. Au revoir!"
But in the doorway he stops for a minute and says significantly:
"But still, my advice to you is--you'd better pass this girl on to some place or other in
good time. Of course, it's your affair, but as a good friend of yours I give you warning."
He goes away. When his steps are abating on the stairs and the front door bangs to behind
him, Emma Edwardovna snorts through her nose and says contemptuously:
"Stool-pigeon! He wants to take money both here and there..."
Little by little they all crawl apart out of the room. It is dark in the house. It smells
sweetly of the half-withered sedge. Quiet reigns.
CHAPTER III.
Until dinner, which is served at six in the evening, the time drags endlessly long and with
intolerable monotony. And, in general, this daily interval is the heaviest and emptiest in
the life of the house. It remotely resembles in its moods those slothful, empty hours
which are lived through during the great holidays in scholastic institutes and other private
institutions for females, when all the friends have dispersed, when there is much leisure
and much indolence, and a radiant, agreeable tedium reigns the whole day. In only their
petticoats and white shifts, with bare arms, sometimes barefooted, the women aimlessly
ramble from room to room, all of them unwashed, uncombed; lazily strike the keys of the
old pianoforte with the index finger, lazily lay out cards to tell their fortune, lazily
exchange curses, and with a languishing irritation await the evening.
Liubka, after breakfast, had carried out the leavings of bread and the cuttings of ham to
Amour, but the dog had soon palled upon her. Together with Niura she had bought some
barberry bon-bons and sunflower seeds, and now both are standing behind the fence
separating the house from the street, gnawing the seeds, the shells of which remain on
their chins and bosoms, and speculate indifferently about those who pass on the street:
about the lamp- lighter, pouring kerosene into the street lamps, about the policeman with
the daily registry book under his arm, about the housekeeper from somebody else's
establishment, running across the road to the general store.
Niura is a small girl, with goggle-eyes of blue; she has white, flaxen hair and little blue
veins on her temples. In her face there is something stolid and innocent, reminiscent of a
white sugar lamb on a Paschal cake. She is lively, bustling, curious, puts her nose into
everything, agrees with everybody, is the first to know the news, and, when she speaks,
she speaks so much and so rapidly
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