at the aborigines. He sees
them, entertaining each other with conversation, go to the open
gate, cross the filthy yard and sit down on a scanty patch of shade
under an aspen tree. Between twelve and one o'clock the fat cook
with brown legs spreads before them something like a baby's sheet
with brown stains upon it, and gives them their dinner. They eat
with wooden spoons, keep brushing away the flies, and go on talking.

"The devil, it is beyond everything," cries Lyashkevsky, revolted.
"I am very glad I have not a gun or a revolver or I should have a
shot at those cattle. I have four knaves--fourteen. . . . Your
point. . . . It really gives me a twitching in my legs. I can't see
those ruffians without being upset."

"Don't excite yourself, it is bad for you."

"But upon my word, it is enough to try the patience of a stone!"

When he has finished dinner the native in blue trousers, worn out
and exhausted, staggering with laziness and repletion, crosses the
street to his own house and sinks feebly on to his bench. He is
struggling with drowsiness and the gnats, and is looking about him
as dejectedly as though he were every minute expecting his end. His
helpless air drives Lyashkevsky out of all patience. The Pole pokes
his head out of the window and shouts at him, spluttering:

"Been gorging? Ah, the old woman! The sweet darling. He has been
stuffing himself, and now he doesn't know what to do with his tummy!
Get out of my sight, you confounded fellow! Plague take you!"

The native looks sourly at him, and merely twiddles his fingers
instead of answering. A school-boy of his acquaintance passes by
him with his satchel on his back. Stopping him the native ponders
a long time what to say to him, and asks:

"Well, what now?"

"Nothing."

"How, nothing?"

"Why, just nothing."

"H'm. . . . And which subject is the hardest?"

"That's according." The school-boy shrugs his shoulders.

"I see--er . . . What is the Latin for tree?"

"Arbor."

"Aha. . . . And so one has to know all that," sighs the blue trousers.
"You have to go into it all. . . . It's hard work, hard work. . . .
Is your dear Mamma well?"

"She is all right, thank you."

"Ah. . . . Well, run along."

After losing two roubles Finks remembers the high school and is
horrified.

"Holy Saints, why it's three o'clock already. How I have been staying
on. Good-bye, I must run. . . ."

"Have dinner with me, and then go," says Lyashkevsky. "You ha