“No,” says he, “I won’t come, I tell you. For you it’s all one whether I go or not, yet for me it’s no good to come here.”
And so he did not come for ten days more. And then, it being the holidays, he came dressed up in a dress suit: he’d evidently been into company. And he was here all day long; he kept playing, and he came the next day, and the third. …
And it began to go in the old style, and I thought it would be fine to have another trial with him.
“No,” says he, “I’m not going to play with you; and as to the one hundred and eighty rubles that I owe you, if you’ll come at the end of a month, you shall have it.”
Very good. So I went to him at the end of a month.
“By God,” says he, “I can’t give it to you; but come back on Thursday.”
Well, I went on Thursday. I found that he had a splendid suite of apartments.
“Well,” says I, “is he at home?”
“He hasn’t got up yet,” I was told.
“Very good, I will wait.”
For a body-servant he had one of his own serfs, such a gray-haired old man! That servant was perfectly single-minded, he didn’t know anything about beating about the bush. So we got into conversation.
“Well,” says he, “what is the use of our living here, master and I? He’s squandered all his property, and it’s mighty little honor or good that we get out of this Petersburg of yours. As we started from the country, I