to me, and why should I waste my time standing
here?" explained Zakhar, in a hoarse gasp which served him in lieu of a
voice, he having lost his voice, according to his own account, while out
hunting with the dogs when he had to accompany his former master, and
when a powerful wind seemed to blow in his throat. He half turned round,
and stood in the middle of the room and glared at his master.

"Have your legs quite given out, that you can't stand a minute? Don't
you see I am worried? Now, please wait a moment! wasn't it lying there
just now? Get me that letter which I received last evening from the
starosta. What did you do with it?"

"What letter? I haven't seen any letter," replied Zakhar.

"Why, you yourself took it from the postman, you scoundrel!"

"It is where you put it; how should I know anything about it?" said
Zakhar, beginning to rummage about among the papers and various things
that littered the table.

"You never know anything at all. There, look on the basket. No, see if
it hasn't been thrown on the sofa.--There, the back of that sofa hasn't
been mended yet. Why have you not got the carpenter to mend it? 'Twas
you who broke it. You never think of anything!"

"I didn't break it," retorted Zakhar; "it broke itself; it was not meant
to last forever; it had to break some time."

Ilya Ilyitch did not consider it necessary to refute this argument. He
contented himself with asking:--

"Have you found it yet?"

"Here are some letters."

"But they are not the right ones."

"Well, there's nothing else," said Zakhar.

"Very good, be gone," said Ilya Ilyitch impatiently. "I am going to get
up. I will find it."

Zakhar went to his room, but he had hardly laid his hand on his couch to
climb up to it before the imperative cry was heard again:--

"Zakhar! Zakhar!"

"Oh, good Lord!" grumbled he, as he started to go for the third time to
Oblomof's library. "What a torment all this is! Oh that death would come
and take me from it!"

"What do you want?" he asked, as he stood with one hand on the door, and
glaring at Oblomof as a sign of his surliness, at such an angle that he
had to look at his master out of the corner of his eyes; while his
master could see only one of his enormous side-whiskers, so bushy that
you might have expected to have two or three birds come flying out from
them.

"My handkerchief, quick! You might have known what I wanted. Don't you
see?" remarked Ilya Ilyitch sternly.

Zakh