f with the bloated jowl on to the scene. Otherwise I should
soon have fixed up matters with her. The cur that he is!"

"But once you told me that you had a wife already?"

Darting at me an angry glance, he turns away with a mutter of:

"AM I to carry my wife about with me in my wallet?"

Here there comes limping across the square a moustachioed Cossack. In
one hand he is holding a bunch of keys, and in the other hand a
battered Cossack cap, peak in front. Behind him, sobbing and applying
his knuckles to his eyes, there is creeping a curly-headed urchin of
eight, while the rear is brought up by a shaggy dog whose dejected
countenance and lowered tail would seem to show that he too is in
disgrace. Each time that the boy whimpers more loudly than usual the
Cossack halts, awaits the lad's coming in silence, cuffs him over the
head with the peak of the cap, and, resuming his way with the gait of a
drunken man, leaves the boy and the dog standing where they are--the
boy lamenting, and the dog wagging its tail as its old black muzzle
sniffs the air. Somehow I discern in the dog's mien of holding itself
prepared for anything that may turn up, a certain resemblance to
Konev's bearing, save that the dog is older in appearance than is the
vagabond.

"You mentioned my wife, I think?" presently he resumes with a sigh.
"Yes, I know, but not EVERY malady proves mortal, and I have been
married nineteen years!"

The rest is well-known to me, for all too frequently have I heard it
and similar tales. Unfortunately, I cannot now take the trouble to stop
him; so once more I am forced to let his complaints come oozing
tediously into my ears.

"The wench was plump," says Konev, "and panting for love; so we just
got married, and brats began to come tumbling from her like bugs from a
bunk."

Subsiding a little, the breeze takes, as it were, to whispering.

"In fact, I could scarcely turn round for them. Even now seven of them
are alive, though originally the stud numbered thirteen. And what was
the use of such a gang? For, consider: my wife is forty-two, and I am
forty-three. She is elderly, and I am what you behold. True, hitherto I
have contrived to keep up my spirits; yet poverty is wearing me down,
and when, last winter, my old woman went to pieces I set forth (for
what else could I do?) to tour the towns. In fact, folk like you and
myself have only one job available--the job of licking one's chops, and
keeping one's eyes open. Y