ve
plenty of time."

Finks stays, but only on condition that dinner shall last no more
than ten minutes. After dining he sits for some five minutes on the
sofa and thinks of the cracked wall, then resolutely lays his head
on the cushion and fills the room with a shrill whistling through
his nose. While he is asleep, Lyashkevsky, who does not approve of
an afternoon nap, sits at the window, stares at the dozing native,
and grumbles:

"Race of curs! I wonder you don't choke with laziness. No work, no
intellectual or moral interests, nothing but vegetating . . . .
disgusting. Tfoo!"

At six o'clock Finks wakes up.

"It's too late to go to the high school now," he says, stretching.
"I shall have to go to-morrow, and now. . . . How about my revenge?
Let's have one more game. . . ."

After seeing his visitor off, between nine and ten, Lyashkevsky
looks after him for some time, and says:

"Damn the fellow, staying here the whole day and doing absolutely
nothing. . . . Simply get their salary and do no work; the devil
take them! . . . The German pig. . . ."

He looks out of the window, but the native is no longer there. He
has gone to bed. There is no one to grumble at, and for the first
time in the day he keeps his mouth shut, but ten minutes passes and
he cannot restrain the depression that overpowers him, and begins
to grumble, shoving the old shabby armchair:

"You only take up room, rubbishly old thing! You ought to have been
burnt long ago, but I keep forgetting to tell them to chop you up.
It's a disgrace!"

And as he gets into bed he presses his hand on a spring of the
mattress, frowns and says peevishly:

"The con--found--ed spring! It will cut my side all night. I will
tell them to rip up the mattress to-morrow and get you out, you
useless thing."

He falls asleep at midnight, and dreams that he is pouring boiling
water over the natives, Finks, and the old armchair.

AN INQUIRY

IT was midday. Voldyrev, a tall, thick-set country gentleman with
a cropped head and prominent eyes, took off his overcoat, mopped
his brow with his silk handkerchief, and somewhat diffidently went
into the government office. There they were scratching away. . . .

"Where can I make an inquiry here?" he said, addressing a porter
who was bringing a trayful of glasses from the furthest recesses
of the office. "I have to make an inquiry here and to take a copy
of a resolution of the Council."

"That way please! To that on