rried . . ." she pronounced meditatively. "H'm. Lilya
and Mila, don't sit at the window, there's a draught! What a pity!
A young man and to let himself sink to this! And all owing to what?
The lack of good influence! There is no mother who would. . . . Not
married? Well . . . there it is. . . . Please be so good," the lady
continued suavely after a moment's thought, "as to go to him and
ask him in my name to . . . refrain from using expressions. . . .
Tell him that Madame Nashatyrin begs him. . . . Tell him she is
staying with her daughters in No. 47 . . . that she has come up
from her estate in the country. . . ."

"Certainly."

"Tell him, a colonel's lady and her daughters. He might even come
and apologize. . . . We are always at home after dinner. Oh, Mila,
shut the window!"

"Why, what do you want with that . . . black sheep, mamma?" drawled
Lilya when the hotel-keeper had retired. "A queer person to invite!
A drunken, rowdy rascal!"

"Oh, don't say so, ma chere! You always talk like that; and there
. . . sit down! Why, whatever he may be, we ought not to despise
him. . . . There's something good in everyone. Who knows," sighed
the colonel's lady, looking her daughters up and down anxiously,
"perhaps your fate is here. Change your dresses anyway. . . ."

IN A STRANGE LAND

SUNDAY, midday. A landowner, called Kamyshev, is sitting in his
dining-room, deliberately eating his lunch at a luxuriously furnished
table. Monsieur Champoun, a clean, neat, smoothly-shaven, old
Frenchman, is sharing the meal with him. This Champoun had once
been a tutor in Kamyshev's household, had taught his children good
manners, the correct pronunciation of French, and dancing: afterwards
when Kamyshev's children had grown up and become lieutenants,
Champoun had become something like a _bonne_ of the male sex. The
duties of the former tutor were not complicated. He had to be
properly dressed, to smell of scent, to listen to Kamyshev's idle
babble, to eat and drink and sleep--and apparently that was all.
For this he received a room, his board, and an indefinite salary.

Kamyshev eats and as usual babbles at random.

"Damnation!" he says, wiping away the tears that have come into his
eyes after a mouthful of ham thickly smeared with mustard. "Ough!
It has shot into my head and all my joints. Your French mustard
would not do that, you know, if you ate the whole potful."

"Some like the French, some prefer the Russian. . ." Champoun