t you
anything. Namely, I hope that you will allow me and the other girls to
escort the late Jennie to the cemetery."

Emma Edwardovna made a wry face.

"Oh, if you want to, my darling Tamara, I have nothing against your
whim. Only what for? This will not help the dead person and will not
make her alive. Only sentimentalism alone will come out of it ... But
very well! Only, however, you know yourself that in accordance with
your law suicides are not buried, or--I don't know with certainty--it
seems they throw them into some dirty hole beyond the cemetery."

"No, do allow me to do as I want to myself. Let it be my whim, but
concede it to me, my darling, dear, bewitching Emma Edwardovna! But
then, I promise you that this will be my last whim. After this I will
be like a wise and obedient soldier at the disposal of a talented
general."

"IS' GUT!" Emma Edwardovna gave in with a sigh. "I can not deny you in
anything, my child. Let me press your hand. Let us toil and labour
together for the common good."

And, having opened the door, she called out across the drawing room
into the entrance-hall: "Simeon!" And when Simeon appeared in the room,
she ordered him weightily and triumphantly:

"Bring us a bottle of champagne here, but the real thing--Rederer demi
sec, and as cool as possible. Step lively!" she ordered the porter, who
was gaping at her with popping eyes. "We will drink with you, Tamara,
to the new business, to our brilliant and beautiful future."

They say that dead people bring luck. If there is any foundation at all
in this superstition, then on this Saturday it could not have told
plainer: the influx of visitors was out of the ordinary, even for a
Saturday night. True, the girls, passing through the corridor or past
the room that had been Jennka's increased their steps; timorously
glanced at it sidelong, out of the corner of the eye; while others even
crossed themselves. But late in the night the fear of death somehow
subsided, grew bearable. All the rooms were occupied, while in the
drawing room a new violinist was trilling without cease--a
free-and-easy, clean-shaven young man, whom the pianist with the
cataract had searched out somewhere and brought with him.

The appointment of Tamara as housekeeper was received with cold
perplexity, with taciturn dryness. But, having bided her time, Tamara
managed to whisper to Little White Manka:

"Listen, Manya! You tell them all that they shouldn't pay any atte