"I am very glad to see you, my dear fellow," I said gaily, meeting him.
"Why, you are stouter than ever...."

"It isn't getting stout; it's swelling," he answered. "The bees must
have stung me."

With the familiarity of a man laughing at his own fatness, he put his
arms round my waist and laid on my breast his big soft head, with the
hair combed down on the forehead like a Little Russian's, and went off
into a thin, aged laugh.

"And you go on getting younger," he said through his laugh. "I wonder
what dye you use for your hair and beard; you might let me have some of
it." Sniffing and gasping, he embraced me and kissed me on the cheek.
"You might give me some of it," he repeated. "Why, you are not forty,
are you?"

"Alas, I am forty-six!" I said, laughing.

Ivan Ivanitch smelt of tallow candles and cooking, and that suited him.
His big, puffy, slow-moving body was swathed in a long frock-coat like a
coachman's full coat, with a high waist, and with hooks and eyes
instead of buttons, and it would have been strange if he had smelt of
eau-de-Cologne, for instance. In his long, unshaven, bluish double chin,
which looked like a thistle, his goggle eyes, his shortness of breath,
and in the whole of his clumsy, slovenly figure, in his voice, his
laugh, and his words, it was difficult to recognize the graceful,
interesting talker who used in old days to make the husbands of the
district jealous on account of their wives.

"I am in great need of your assistance, my friend," I said, when we were
sitting in the dining-room, drinking tea. "I want to organize relief for
the starving peasants, and I don't know how to set about it. So perhaps
you will be so kind as to advise me."

"Yes, yes, yes," said Ivan Ivanitch, sighing. "To be sure, to be sure,
to be sure...."

"I would not have worried you, my dear fellow, but really there is no
one here but you I can appeal to. You know what people are like about
here."

"To be sure, to be sure, to be sure.... Yes."

I thought that as we were going to have a serious, business consultation
in which any one might take part, regardless of their position or
personal relations, why should I not invite Natalya Gavrilovna.

"_Tres faciunt collegium_," I said gaily. "What if we were to ask
Natalya Gavrilovna? What do you think? Fenya," I said, turning to the
maid, "ask Natalya Gavrilovna to come upstairs to us, if possible at
once. Tell her it's a very important matter."

A little