as Ivan Petrovitch who displayed his talents.
Laughing only with his eyes, he told anecdotes, made epigrams, asked
ridiculous riddles and answered them himself, talking the whole
time in his extraordinary language, evolved in the course of prolonged
practice in witticism and evidently now become a habit: "Badsome,"
"Hugeous," "Thank you most dumbly," and so on.

But that was not all. When the guests, replete and satisfied, trooped
into the hall, looking for their coats and sticks, there bustled
about them the footman Pavlusha, or, as he was called in the family,
Pava--a lad of fourteen with shaven head and chubby cheeks.

"Come, Pava, perform!" Ivan Petrovitch said to him.

Pava struck an attitude, flung up his arm, and said in a tragic
tone: "Unhappy woman, die!"

And every one roared with laughter.

"It's entertaining," thought Startsev, as he went out into the
street.

He went to a restaurant and drank some beer, then set off to walk
home to Dyalizh; he walked all the way singing:

"'Thy voice to me so languid and caressing. . . .'"

On going to bed, he felt not the slightest fatigue after the six
miles' walk. On the contrary, he felt as though he could with
pleasure have walked another twenty.

"Not badsome," he thought, and laughed as he fell asleep.

II

Startsev kept meaning to go to the Turkins' again, but there was a
great deal of work in the hospital, and he was unable to find free
time. In this way more than a year passed in work and solitude. But
one day a letter in a light blue envelope was brought him from the
town.

Vera Iosifovna had been suffering for some time from migraine, but
now since Kitten frightened her every day by saying that she was
going away to the Conservatoire, the attacks began to be more
frequent. All the doctors of the town had been at the Turkins'; at
last it was the district doctor's turn. Vera Iosifovna wrote him a
touching letter in which she begged him to come and relieve her
sufferings. Startsev went, and after that he began to be often,
very often at the Turkins'. . . . He really did something for Vera
Iosifovna, and she was already telling all her visitors that he was
a wonderful and exceptional doctor. But it was not for the sake of
her migraine that he visited the Turkins' now. . . .

It was a holiday. Ekaterina Ivanovna finished her long, wearisome
exercises on the piano. Then they sat a long time in the dining-room,
drinking tea, and Ivan Petrovitch to