"You haven't noticed," continued Peredonov, "that there's a possibility of a scandal in our gymnasia. No one has noticed it—I alone have detected it."
"What scandal?" asked Khripatch with a dry smile, pacing up and down his study. "You arouse my curiosity, though, to speak candidly, I hardly believe in the possibility of a scandal in our school."
"Yes, but you don't know who you have recently admitted to the school," said Peredonov with such malevolence that Khripatch paused and looked attentively at him.
"I know all the new students perfectly well," he said dryly. "Besides, it goes without saying that the new boys in the first form have never been excluded from another school, and the only one who has just entered the fifth form came to us with such recommendations that preclude all possibility of suspicion."
"Yes, but he shouldn't have come to us but to some other kind of institution," said Peredonov morosely and as if reluctantly.
"Please explain, Ardalyon Borisitch," said Khripatch. "I hope you don't mean to say that Pilnikov ought to have been sent to a Reformatory."
"No, that creature should be sent to a pension where they don't learn ancient languages,"[1] said Peredonov maliciously, and his eyes gleamed with spite.
Khripatch put his hands into the pockets of his short jacket and looked at Peredonov with unusual astonishment.
"What pension?" he asked. "Do you know what institutions are designated in that way? And if you do know, how could you venture to make such an unseemly suggestion?"
Khripatch flushed violently and his voice sounded drier and even more decisive. At another time these symptoms of the Head-Master's anger would have flustered Peredonov. But this time he was not flustered.