“There, now, how well you’ve made yourself at home here. Here’s to your lawful marriage!” she congratulated them.
“Daddy, treat the little housekeeper with beer,” begged Manka. “Drink, housekeeper dear.”
“Well, in that case here’s to your health, mister. Somehow, your face seems kind of familiar to me?”
The German drank his beer, sucking and licking his moustache, and impatiently waited for the housekeeper to go away. But she, having put down her glass and thanked him, said:
“Let me get the money coming from you, mister. As much as is coming for the beer and the time. That’s both better for you and more convenient for us.”
The demand for the money went against the grain of the teacher, because it completely destroyed the sentimental part of his intentions. He became angry:
“What sort of boorishness is this, anyway! It doesn’t look as if I were preparing to run away from here. And besides, can’t you discriminate between people at all? You can see that a man of respectability, in a uniform, has come to you, and not some tramp. What sort of importunity is this!”
The housekeeper gave in a little.
“Now, don’t get offended, mister. Of course, you’ll pay the young lady yourself for the visit. I don’t think you will do her any wrong, she’s a fine girl among us. But I must trouble you to pay for the beer and lemonade. I, too, have to give an account to the proprietress. Two bottles at fifty is a rouble and the lemonade thirty—a rouble thirty.”
“Good Lord, a bottle of beer fifty kopecks!” the German waxed indignant. “Why, I will get it in any beer-shop for twelve kopecks.”