secretary. You've muddled it, you queer
fish. Prokofy Osipitch was our secretary before, that's true, but
two years ago he was transferred to the second division as head
clerk."

"How the devil is one to tell?"

"Why are you stopping? Go on, it's awkward."

Zapoikin turned to the grave, and with the same eloquence continued
his interrupted speech. Prokofy Osipitch, an old clerk with a
clean-shaven face, was in fact standing by a tombstone. He looked
at the orator and frowned angrily.

"Well, you have put your foot into it, haven't you!" laughed his
fellow-clerks as they returned from the funeral with Zapoikin.
"Burying a man alive!"

"It's unpleasant, young man," grumbled Prokofy Osipitch. "Your
speech may be all right for a dead man, but in reference to a living
one it is nothing but sarcasm! Upon my soul what have you been
saying? Disinterested, incorruptible, won't take bribes! Such things
can only be said of the living in sarcasm. And no one asked you,
sir, to expatiate on my face. Plain, hideous, so be it, but why
exhibit my countenance in that public way! It's insulting."

MALINGERERS

MARFA PETROVNA PETCHONKIN, the General's widow, who has been
practising for ten years as a homeopathic doctor, is seeing patients
in her study on one of the Tuesdays in May. On the table before her
lie a chest of homeopathic drugs, a book on homeopathy, and bills
from a homeopathic chemist. On the wall the letters from some
Petersburg homeopath, in Marfa Petrovna's opinion a very celebrated
and great man, hang under glass in a gilt frame, and there also is
a portrait of Father Aristark, to whom the lady owes her salvation
--that is, the renunciation of pernicious allopathy and the knowledge
of the truth. In the vestibule patients are sitting waiting, for
the most part peasants. All but two or three of them are barefoot,
as the lady has given orders that their ill-smelling boots are to
be left in the yard.

Marfa Petrovna has already seen ten patients when she calls the
eleventh: "Gavrila Gruzd!"

The door opens and instead of Gavrila Gruzd, Zamuhrishen, a
neighbouring landowner who has sunk into poverty, a little old man
with sour eyes, and with a gentleman's cap under his arm, walks
into the room. He puts down his stick in the corner, goes up to the
lady, and without a word drops on one knee before her.

"What are you about, Kuzma Kuzmitch?" cries the lady in horror,
flushing crimson. "For goodness sake!"

"Whil