“No, Toskunov. . . .”
“Excuse me, there’s no one called Toskunov. . . .”
Ivan Ivanitch shrugged his shoulders and trudged on farther.
“You needn’t look,” the old man called after them. “I tell you there isn’t, and there isn’t.”
“Listen, auntie,” said Ivan Ivanitch, addressing an old woman who was sitting at a corner with a tray of pears and sunflower seeds, “where is Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov’s house?”
The old woman looked at him with surprise and laughed.
“Why, Nastasya Petrovna live in her own house now!” she cried. “Lord! it is eight years since she married her daughter and gave up the house to her son-in-law! It’s her son-in-law lives there now.”
And her eyes expressed: “How is it you didn’t know a simple thing like that, you fools?”
“And where does she live now?” Ivan Ivanitch asked.
“Oh, Lord!” cried the old woman, flinging up her hands in surprise. “She moved ever so long ago! It’s eight years since she gave up her house to her son-in-law! Upon my word!”