His wife⁠—pregnant, thin and pale, with her head and shoulders wrapped in a shawl so that nothing of her face could be seen but her eyes⁠—stood behind him in the vestibule to see him off.

“Now really, you ought to take Nikíta with you,” she said timidly, stepping out from the doorway.

Vasíli Andréevich did not answer. Her words evidently annoyed him and he frowned angrily and spat.

“You have money on you,” she continued in the same plaintive voice. “What if the weather gets worse! Do take him, for goodness’ sake!”

“Why? Don’t I know the road that I must needs take a guide?” exclaimed Vasíli Andréevich, uttering every word very distinctly and compressing his lips unnaturally, as he usually did when speaking to buyers and sellers.

“Really you ought to take him. I beg you in God’s name!” his wife repeated, wrapping her shawl more closely round her head.