and Dymov with red eyes lay on his stomach and looked mockingly
at Yegorushka.

"Beat him, beat him!" shouted Yegorushka.

"He is delirious," said Father Christopher in an undertone.

"It's a nuisance!" sighed Ivan Ivanitch.

"He must be rubbed with oil and vinegar. Please God, he will be
better to-morrow."

To be rid of bad dreams, Yegorushka opened his eyes and began looking
towards the fire. Father Christopher and Ivan Ivanitch had now
finished their tea and were talking in a whisper. The first was
smiling with delight, and evidently could not forget that he had
made a good bargain over his wool; what delighted him was not so
much the actual profit he had made as the thought that on getting
home he would gather round him his big family, wink slyly and go
off into a chuckle; at first he would deceive them all, and say
that he had sold the wool at a price below its value, then he would
give his son-in-law, Mihail, a fat pocket-book and say: "Well, take
it! that's the way to do business!" Kuzmitchov did not seem pleased;
his face expressed, as before, a business-like reserve and anxiety.

"If I could have known that Tcherepahin would give such a price,"
he said in a low voice, "I wouldn't have sold Makarov those five
tons at home. It is vexatious! But who could have told that the
price had gone up here?"

A man in a white shirt cleared away the samovar and lighted the
little lamp before the ikon in the corner. Father Christopher
whispered something in his ear; the man looked, made a serious face
like a conspirator, as though to say, "I understand," went out, and
returned a little while afterwards and put something under the sofa.
Ivan Ivanitch made himself a bed on the floor, yawned several times,
said his prayers lazily, and lay down.

"I think of going to the cathedral to-morrow," said Father Christopher.
"I know the sacristan there. I ought to go and see the bishop after
mass, but they say he is ill."

He yawned and put out the lamp. Now there was no light in the room
but the little lamp before the ikon.

"They say he can't receive visitors," Father Christopher went on,
undressing. "So I shall go away without seeing him."

He took off his full coat, and Yegorushka saw Robinson Crusoe
reappear. Robinson stirred something in a saucer, went up to
Yegorushka and whispered:

"Lomonosov, are you asleep? Sit up; I'm going to rub you with oil
and vinegar. It's a good thing, only you must say a prayer."

Yeg