o. They ate
nothing, as though a peasant would understand sauce!"

"Two and a half," said his father, shaking his head.

"Well, it's not like the country there, you go into a restaurant to have
a snack of something, you ask for one thing and another, others join
till there is a party of us, one has a drink--and before you know where
you are it is daylight and you've three or four roubles each to pay.
And when one is with Samorodov he likes to have coffee with brandy in it
after everything, and brandy is sixty kopecks for a little glass."

"And he is making it all up," said the old man enthusiastically; "he is
making it all up, lying!"

"I am always with Samorodov now. It is Samorodov who writes my letters
to you. He writes splendidly. And if I were to tell you, mamma," Anisim
went on gaily, addressing Varvara, "the sort of fellow that Samorodov
is, you would not believe me. We call him Muhtar, because he is black
like an Armenian. I can see through him, I know all his affairs like
the five fingers of my hand, and he feels that, and he always follows
me about, we are regular inseparables. He seems not to like it in a way,
but he can't get on without me. Where I go he goes. I have a correct,
trustworthy eye, mamma. One sees a peasant selling a shirt in the market
place. 'Stay, that shirt's stolen.' And really it turns out it is so:
the shirt was a stolen one."

"What do you tell from?" asked Varvara.

"Not from anything, I have just an eye for it. I know nothing about the
shirt, only for some reason I seem drawn to it: it's stolen, and that's
all I can say. Among us detectives it's come to their saying, 'Oh,
Anisim has gone to shoot snipe!' That means looking for stolen goods.
Yes.... Anybody can steal, but it is another thing to keep! The earth is
wide, but there is nowhere to hide stolen goods."

"In our village a ram and two ewes were carried off last week," said
Varvara, and she heaved a sigh, and there is no one to try and find
them.... Oh, tut, tut.."

"Well, I might have a try. I don't mind."

The day of the wedding arrived. It was a cool but bright, cheerful April
day. People were driving about Ukleevo from early morning with pairs or
teams of three horses decked with many-coloured ribbons on their
yokes and manes, with a jingle of bells. The rooks, disturbed by this
activity, were cawing noisily in the willows, and the starlings sang
their loudest unceasingly as though rejoicing that there was a wedding