elf a just and generous man, was one
day interviewing in his office a schoolmaster called Vremensky.

"No, Mr. Vremensky," he was saying, "your retirement is inevitable.
You cannot continue your work as a schoolmaster with a voice like
that! How did you come to lose it?"

"I drank cold beer when I was in a perspiration. . ." hissed the
schoolmaster.

"What a pity! After a man has served fourteen years, such a calamity
all at once! The idea of a career being ruined by such a trivial
thing. What are you intending to do now?"

The schoolmaster made no answer.

"Are you a family man?" asked the director.

"A wife and two children, your Excellency . . ." hissed the
schoolmaster.

A silence followed. The director got up from the table and walked
to and fro in perturbation.

"I cannot think what I am going to do with you!" he said. "A teacher
you cannot be, and you are not yet entitled to a pension. . . . To
abandon you to your fate, and leave you to do the best you can, is
rather awkward. We look on you as one of our men, you have served
fourteen years, so it is our business to help you. . . . But how
are we to help you? What can I do for you? Put yourself in my place:
what can I do for you?"

A silence followed; the director walked up and down, still thinking,
and Vremensky, overwhelmed by his trouble, sat on the edge of his
chair, and he, too, thought. All at once the director began beaming,
and even snapped his fingers.

"I wonder I did not think of it before!" he began rapidly. "Listen,
this is what I can offer you. Next week our secretary at the Home
is retiring. If you like, you can have his place! There you are!"

Vremensky, not expecting such good fortune, beamed too.

"That's capital," said the director. "Write the application to-day."

Dismissing Vremensky, Fyodor Petrovitch felt relieved and even
gratified: the bent figure of the hissing schoolmaster was no longer
confronting him, and it was agreeable to recognize that in offering
a vacant post to Vremensky he had acted fairly and conscientiously,
like a good-hearted and thoroughly decent person. But this agreeable
state of mind did not last long. When he went home and sat down to
dinner his wife, Nastasya Ivanovna, said suddenly:

"Oh yes, I was almost forgetting! Nina Sergeyevna came to see me
yesterday and begged for your interest on behalf of a young man. I
am told there is a vacancy in our Home. . . ."

"Yes, but the post has already been p