“Where I’m going, grandpa, there you mustn’t go—to-morrow we will meet in the same place as to-day. Good-bye!”
They all walked out of the restaurant. At the door Borya Sobashnikov, always a little finical and unnecessarily supercilious, stopped Lichonin and called him to one side.
“I’m surprised at you, Lichonin,” he said squeamishly. “We have gathered together in our own close company, yet you must needs drag in some vagabond. The devil knows who he is!”
“Quit that, Borya,” answered Lichonin amicably. “He’s a warm-hearted fellow.”
CHAPTER IX.
“Well now, gentlemen, this isn’t fit for pigs,” Yarchenko was saying, grumblingly, at the entrance of Anna Markovna’s establishment. “If we finally have gone, we might at least have chosen a decent place, and not some wretched hole. Really, gentlemen, let’s better go to Treppel’s alongside; there it’s clean and light, at any rate.”
“If you please, if you please, signior,” insisted Lichonin, opening the door before the sub-professor with courtly urbanity, bowing and spreading his arms before him. “If you please.”
“But this is an abomination ... At Treppel’s the women are better-looking, at least.”
Ramses, walking behind, burst into dry laughter.
“So, so, Gavrila Petrovich. Let us continue in the same spirit. Let us condemn the hungry, petty thief who has stolen a five-kopeck loaf out of a tray, but if the director of a bank has squandered somebody else’s million on race horses and cigars, let us mitigate his lot.”