“H’m. . . . And which subject is the hardest?”
“That’s according.” The school-boy shrugs his shoulders.
“I see—er . . . What is the Latin for tree?”
“Arbor.”
“Aha. . . . And so one has to know all that,” sighs the blue trousers. “You have to go into it all. . . . It’s hard work, hard work. . . . Is your dear Mamma well?”
“She is all right, thank you.”
“Ah. . . . Well, run along.”
After losing two roubles Finks remembers the high school and is horrified.
“Holy Saints, why it’s three o’clock already. How I have been staying on. Good-bye, I must run. . . .”
“Have dinner with me, and then go,” says Lyashkevsky. “You have plenty of time.”