s indoors?
Please walk in, I humbly beg you. . . . You are kindly welcome!
Give me all your things. . . . Oh, my goodness me!"

Moisey Moisevitch, who was rummaging in the chaise and assisting
the travellers to alight, suddenly turned back and shouted in a
voice as frantic and choking as though he were drowning and calling
for help:

"Solomon! Solomon!"

"Solomon! Solomon!" a woman's voice repeated indoors.

The swing-door creaked, and in the doorway appeared a rather short
young Jew with a big beak-like nose, with a bald patch surrounded
by rough red curly hair; he was dressed in a short and very shabby
reefer jacket, with rounded lappets and short sleeves, and in short
serge trousers, so that he looked skimpy and short-tailed like an
unfledged bird. This was Solomon, the brother of Moisey Moisevitch.
He went up to the chaise, smiling rather queerly, and did not speak
or greet the travellers.

"Ivan Ivanitch and Father Christopher have come," said Moisey
Moisevitch in a tone as though he were afraid his brother would not
believe him. "Dear, dear! What a surprise! Such honoured guests to
have come us so suddenly! Come, take their things, Solomon. Walk
in, honoured guests."

A little later Kuzmitchov, Father Christopher, and Yegorushka were
sitting in a big gloomy empty room at an old oak table. The table
was almost in solitude, for, except a wide sofa covered with torn
American leather and three chairs, there was no other furniture in
the room. And, indeed, not everybody would have given the chairs
that name. They were a pitiful semblance of furniture, covered with
American leather that had seen its best days, and with backs bent
backwards at an unnaturally acute angle, so that they looked like
children's sledges. It was hard to imagine what had been the unknown
carpenter's object in bending the chairbacks so mercilessly, and
one was tempted to imagine that it was not the carpenter's fault,
but that some athletic visitor had bent the chairs like this as a
feat, then had tried to bend them back again and had made them
worse. The room looked gloomy, the walls were grey, the ceilings
and the cornices were grimy; on the floor were chinks and yawning
holes that were hard to account for (one might have fancied they
were made by the heel of the same athlete), and it seemed as though
the room would still have been dark if a dozen lamps had hung in
it. There was nothing approaching an ornament on the walls or the
windo