about
the smallpox between us."

Yergunov was disconcerted.

"I'm not talking about you," he said. "Lie down, since you are lying
down."

The dark-skinned peasant had never been to the hospital, and Yergunov
did not know who he was or where he came from; and now, looking at
him, he made up his mind that the man must be a gypsy. The peasant
got up and, stretching and yawning loudly, went up to Lyubka and
Kalashnikov, and sat down beside them, and he, too, began looking
at the book. His sleepy face softened and a look of envy came into
it.

"Look, Merik," Lyubka said to him; "get me such horses and I will
drive to heaven."

"Sinners can't drive to heaven," said Kalashnikov. "That's for
holiness."

Then Lyubka laid the table and brought in a big piece of fat bacon,
salted cucumbers, a wooden platter of boiled meat cut up into little
pieces, then a frying-pan, in which there were sausages and cabbage
spluttering. A cut-glass decanter of vodka, which diffused a smell
of orange-peel all over the room when it was poured out, was put
on the table also.

Yergunov was annoyed that Kalashnikov and the dark fellow Merik
talked together and took no notice of him at all, behaving exactly
as though he were not in the room. And he wanted to talk to them,
to brag, to drink, to have a good meal, and if possible to have a
little fun with Lyubka, who sat down near him half a dozen times
while they were at supper, and, as though by accident, brushed
against him with her handsome shoulders and passed her hands over
her broad hips. She was a healthy, active girl, always laughing and
never still: she would sit down, then get up, and when she was
sitting down she would keep turning first her face and then her
back to her neighbour, like a fidgety child, and never failed to
brush against him with her elbows or her knees.

And he was displeased, too, that the peasants drank only a glass
each and no more, and it was awkward for him to drink alone. But
he could not refrain from taking a second glass, all the same, then
a third, and he ate all the sausage. He brought himself to flatter
the peasants, that they might accept him as one of the party instead
of holding him at arm's length.

"You are a fine set of fellows in Bogalyovka!" he said, and wagged
his head.

"In what way fine fellows?" enquired Kalashnikov.

"Why, about horses, for instance. Fine fellows at stealing!"

"H'm! fine fellows, you call them. Nothing but thieves an