“Now I am sure of getting Shtabel’s place or Vinnikov’s,” thought Fyodor Vassilievitch. “It was promised me long ago, and the promotion means eight hundred roubles additional income, besides the grants for office expenses.”
“Now I shall have to petition for my brother-in-law to be transferred from Kaluga,” thought Pyotr Ivanovitch. “My wife will be very glad. She won’t be able to say now that I’ve never done anything for her family.”
“I thought somehow that he’d never get up from his bed again,” Pyotr Ivanovitch said aloud. “I’m sorry!”
“But what was it exactly that was wrong with him?”
“The doctors could not decide. That’s to say, they did decide, but differently. When I saw him last, I thought he would get over it.”
“Well, I positively haven’t called there ever since the holidays. I’ve kept meaning to go.”
“Had he any property?”
“I think there’s something, very small, of his wife’s. But something quite trifling.”
“Yes, one will have to go and call. They live such a terribly long way off.”
“A long way from you, you mean. Everything’s a long way from your place.”
“There, he can never forgive me for living the other side of the river,” said Pyotr Ivanovitch, smiling at Shebek. And they began to talk of the great distances between different parts of the town, and went back into the court.