he general store.

Niura is a small girl, with goggle-eyes of blue; she has white, flaxen
hair and little blue veins on her temples. In her face there is
something stolid and innocent, reminiscent of a white sugar lamb on a
Paschal cake. She is lively, bustling, curious, puts her nose into
everything, agrees with everybody, is the first to know the news, and,
when she speaks, she speaks so much and so rapidly that spray flies out
of her mouth and bubbles effervescence on the red lips, as in children.

Opposite, out of the dram-shop, a servant pops out for a minute--a
curly, besotted young fellow with a cast in his eye--and runs into the
neighbouring public house.

"Prokhor Ivanovich, oh Prokhor Ivanovich," shouts Niura, "don't you
want some?--I'll treat you to some sunflower seeds!"

"Come on in and pay us a visit," Liubka chimes in.

Niura snorts and adds through the laughter which suffocates her:

"Warm your feet for a while!"

But the front door opens; in it appears the formidable and stern figure
of the senior housekeeper.

"Pfui![2] What sort of indecency is this!" she cries commandingly. "How
many times must it be repeated to you, that you must not jump out on
the street during the day, and also--pfui!--only in your underwear. I
can't understand how you have no conscience yourselves. Decent girls,
who respect themselves, must not demean themselves that way in public.
It seems, thank God, that you are not in an establishment catering to
soldiers, but in a respectable house. Not in Little Yamskaya."

[2] A German exclamation of disgust or contempt, corresponding to the
English fie.--Trans.

The girls return into the house, get into the kitchen, and for a long
time sit there on tabourets, contemplating the angry cook Prascoviya,
swinging their legs and silently gnawing the sunflower seeds.

In the room of Little Manka, who is also called Manka the Scandaliste
and Little White Manka, a whole party has gathered. Sitting on the edge
of the bed, she and another girl--Zoe, a tall handsome girl, with
arched eyebrows, with grey, somewhat bulging eyes, with the most
typical, white, kind face of the Russian prostitute--are playing at
cards, playing at "sixty-six." Little Manka's closest friend, Jennie,
is lying behind their backs on the bed, prone on her back, reading a
tattered book, The Queen's Necklace, the work of Monsieur Dumas, and
smoking. In the entire establishment she is the only lover of reading
an