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painful matters.

The place was half full of people, most of them with anxious faces, and
all having some object or other in their hands. The pawn-shops do their
best business in the evening. A man and a woman, both advanced in middle
age, well fed, parsimoniously washed and possessing profiles of an outline
disquieting to Christian prejudices, leaned over the counter, handled the
articles offered them, consulted each other in incomprehensible
monosyllables, talked volubly to the customers in oily undertones and from
time to time counted out small doses of change which they gave to the
eager recipients, accompanied by little slips of paper on which there were
both printed and written words. The room was warm and redolent of poverty.
A broad flame of gas burned, without a shade, over the middle of the
counter.

In spite of their unctuous tones the Hebrew and his wife did their
business rapidly, with sharpness and decision. Either one of them would
have undertaken to name the precise pawning value of anything on earth
and, possibly, of most things in heaven, provided that the universe were
brought piecemeal to their counter. Both Vjera and Schmidt had been made
acquainted by previous necessities with the establishment. Vjera held her
paper parcel in her hand. The other things were laid together upon the
counter. The Hebrew woman glanced at the samovar, felt the weight of it
and turned it once round.

"Leaky," she observed in her smooth voice. "Old brass. One mark and a
half." Her husband put out his hand, touched the machine, lifted it, and
nodded.

"Only a mark and a half!" exclaimed Vjera. "And the skin, how much for
that?"

"It is a genuine Russian wolf," Schmidt put in. "And it is very large."

"Moth-eaten," said the Jewess. "And there is a hole in the side. Five
marks."

Schmidt held the fur up to the light and blew into it with a professional
air, as furriers do.

"Look at that!" he cried, persuasively. "Why, it is worth twenty!"

The Hebrew lady, instead of answering extended a fat thumb and a plump,
pointed forefinger, and pinching a score of hairs between the two, pulled
them out without effort, and then held them close to the Cossack's eyes.

"Five marks," she repeated, getting the money out and preparing to fill in
a couple of pawn-tickets.

"Make it ten, with the samovar!" entreated Vjera. The Jewess smiled.

"Do you think the samovar is of gold?" she inquired. "Six and a half for
the two. Ta