ldn't believe me, Franz Stepanitch, sometimes it makes
me so cross that I could jump out of the window and give the low
fellow a good horse-whipping. Come, why don't you work? What are
you sitting there for?"

The native looks indifferently at Lyashkevsky, tries to say something
but cannot; sloth and the sultry heat have paralysed his conversational
faculties. . . . Yawning lazily, he makes the sign of the cross
over his mouth, and turns his eyes up towards the sky where pigeons
fly, bathing in the hot air.

"You must not be too severe in your judgments, honoured friend,"
sighs Finks, mopping his big bald head with his handkerchief. "Put
yourself in their place: business is slack now, there's unemployment
all round, a bad harvest, stagnation in trade."

"Good gracious, how you talk!" cries Lyashkevsky in indignation,
angrily wrapping his dressing gown round him. "Supposing he has no
job and no trade, why doesn't he work in his own home, the devil
flay him! I say! Is there no work for you at home? Just look, you
brute! Your steps have come to pieces, the plankway is falling into
the ditch, the fence is rotten; you had better set to and mend it
all, or if you don't know how, go into the kitchen and help your
wife. Your wife is running out every minute to fetch water or carry
out the slops. Why shouldn't you run instead, you rascal? And then
you must remember, Franz Stepanitch, that he has six acres of garden,
that he has pigsties and poultry houses, but it is all wasted and
no use. The flower garden is overgrown with weeds and almost baked
dry, while the boys play ball in the kitchen garden. Isn't he a
lazy brute? I assure you, though I have only the use of an acre and
a half with my lodgings, you will always find radishes, and salad,
and fennel, and onions, while that blackguard buys everything at
the market."

"He is a Russian, there is no doing anything with him," said Finks
with a condescending smile; "it's in the Russian blood. . . . They
are a very lazy people! If all property were given to Germans or
Poles, in a year's time you would not recognise the town."

The native in the blue trousers beckons a girl with a sieve, buys
a kopeck's worth of sunflower seeds from her and begins cracking
them.

"A race of curs!" says Lyashkevsky angrily. "That's their only
occupation, they crack sunflower seeds and they talk politics! The
devil take them!"

Staring wrathfully at the blue trousers, Lyashkevsky is gradually