ed till dinnertime
but the door opened and Ivan Ivanitch walked in. He said good-morning
hurriedly, sat down to the table, and began rapidly swallowing his
tea.

"Well, I have settled all our business," he said. "We might have
gone home to-day, but we have still to think about Yegor. We must
arrange for him. My sister told me that Nastasya Petrovna, a friend
of hers, lives somewhere here, so perhaps she will take him in as
a boarder."

He rummaged in his pocket-book, found a crumpled note and read:

"'Little Lower Street: Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov, living in a
house of her own.' We must go at once and try to find her. It's a
nuisance!"

Soon after breakfast Ivan Ivanitch and Yegorushka left the inn.

"It's a nuisance," muttered his uncle. "You are sticking to me like
a burr. You and your mother want education and gentlemanly breeding
and I have nothing but worry with you both. . . ."

When they crossed the yard, the waggons and the drivers were not
there. They had all gone off to the quay early in the morning. In
a far-off dark corner of the yard stood the chaise.

"Good-bye, chaise!" thought Yegorushka.

At first they had to go a long way uphill by a broad street, then
they had to cross a big marketplace; here Ivan Ivanitch asked a
policeman for Little Lower Street.

"I say," said the policeman, with a grin, "it's a long way off, out
that way towards the town grazing ground."

They met several cabs but Ivan Ivanitch only permitted himself such
a weakness as taking a cab in exceptional cases and on great holidays.
Yegorushka and he walked for a long while through paved streets,
then along streets where there were only wooden planks at the sides
and no pavements, and in the end got to streets where there were
neither planks nor pavements. When their legs and their tongues had
brought them to Little Lower Street they were both red in the face,
and taking off their hats, wiped away the perspiration.

"Tell me, please," said Ivan Ivanitch, addressing an old man sitting
on a little bench by a gate, "where is Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov's
house?"

"There is no one called Toskunov here," said the old man, after
pondering a moment. "Perhaps it's Timoshenko you want."

"No, Toskunov. . . ."

"Excuse me, there's no one called Toskunov. . . ."

Ivan Ivanitch shrugged his shoulders and trudged on farther.

"You needn't look," the old man called after them. "I tell you there
isn't, and there isn't."

"Listen,