“Yes, he too.”
“I would ask Alexandr Daviditch and my friends in general not to trouble so much about me.”
“Here is Samoylenko; you had better ask him not to trouble so much about you.”
“I don’t understand your tone,” Laevsky muttered, suddenly feeling as though he had only just realised that the zoologist hated and despised him, and was jeering at him, and was his bitterest and most inveterate enemy.
“Keep that tone for some one else,” he said softly, unable to speak aloud for the hatred with which his chest and throat were choking, as they had been the night before with laughter.
Samoylenko came in in his shirt-sleeves, crimson and perspiring from the stifling kitchen.
“Ah, you here?” he said. “Good-morning, my dear boy. Have you had dinner? Don’t stand on ceremony. Have you had dinner?”
“Alexandr Daviditch,” said Laevsky, standing up, “though I did appeal to you to help me in a private matter, it did not follow that I released you from the obligation of discretion and respect for other people’s private affairs.”
“What’s this?” asked Samoylenko, in astonishment.
“If you have no money,” Laevsky went on, raising his voice and shifting from one foot to the other in his excitement, “don’t give it; refuse it. But why spread abroad in every back street that my position is hopeless, and all the rest of it? I can’t endure such benevolence and friend’s assistance where there’s a shilling-worth of talk for a ha’p’orth of help! You can boast of your benevolence as much as you please, but no one has given you the right to gossip about my private affairs!”