“I’ll tell you something,” Trosenko remarked. “Reckon what way you like and you’ll find we might as well put our teeth away on a shelf, and yet here we are all alive, drinking tea, smoking tobacco, and drinking vodka. When you’ve served as long as I have,” he went on, turning to the ensign, “you’ll have also learned how to live. Why, gentlemen, do you know how he treats the orderlies?”

And Trosenko, dying with laughter, told us the whole story about the ensign and his orderly, though we had all heard it hundreds of times.

“Why do you look so like a rose, old chap?” continued he, addressing the ensign, who blushed, perspired, and smiled, so that it was pitiful to see him. “Never mind, old chap! I was just like you once, and now look what a fine fellow I am. You let a young fellow straight from Russia in here⁠—haven’t we seen them?⁠—and he gets spasms or rheumatism or something; and here am I settled here, and it’s my house and my bed and all, d’you see?”

And thereupon he drank another glass of vodka, and looking fixedly at Kraft, said, “Eh?”