town simply to study the dandies, and in the end dress us in suits
that even a caricaturist would have called _outre_ and grotesque. We cut
a dash in impossibly narrow trousers and in such short jackets that we
always felt quite abashed in the presence of young ladies.

This Spiridon spent a long time taking my measure. He measured me all
over lengthways and crossways, as though he meant to put hoops round
me like a barrel; then he spent a long time noting down my measurements
with a thick pencil on a bit of paper, and ticked off all the
measurements with triangular signs. When he had finished with me he set
to work on my tutor, Yegor Alexyevitch Pobyedimsky. My beloved tutor was
then at the stage when young men watch the growth of their moustache
and are critical of their clothes, and so you can imagine the devout awe
with which Spiridon approached him. Yegor Alexyevitch had to throw back
his head, to straddle his legs like an inverted V, first lift up his
arms, then let them fall. Spiridon measured him several times, walking
round him during the process like a love-sick pigeon round its mate,
going down on one knee, bending double.... My mother, weary, exhausted
by her exertions and heated by ironing, watched these lengthy
proceedings, and said:

"Mind now, Spiridon, you will have to answer for it to God if you spoil
the cloth! And it will be the worse for you if you don't make them fit!"

Mother's words threw Spiridon first into a fever, then into a
perspiration, for he was convinced that he would not make them fit.
He received one rouble twenty kopecks for making my suit, and for
Pobyedimsky's two roubles, but we provided the cloth, the lining, and
the buttons. The price cannot be considered excessive, as Novostroevka
was about seven miles from us, and the tailor came to fit us four times.
When he came to try the things on and we squeezed ourselves into the
tight trousers and jackets adorned with basting threads, mother always
frowned contemptuously and expressed her surprise:

"Goodness knows what the fashions are coming to nowadays! I am
positively ashamed to look at them. If brother were not used to
Petersburg I would not get you fashionable clothes!"

Spiridon, relieved that the blame was thrown on the fashion and not on
him, shrugged his shoulders and sighed, as though to say:

"There's no help for it; it's the spirit of the age!"

The excitement with which we awaited the arrival of our guest can only
be