"Because no one dares to appear before the authorities without a uniform. You might get beaten for doing it."
Volodin sniggered. Peredonov bent over him closer and whispered:
"Sometimes he even lives in the shape of a were-wolf. You may think it's simply a cat, but that's an error, it's really a gendarme running about. No one hides from a cat, and he listens to everything that's said."
At last, after a week and a half, the Head-Master's wife paid a visit to Varvara. She arrived with her husband on a week-day at four o'clock, all dressed up, attractive-looking, bringing a perfume of violets with her—altogether unexpectedly for the Peredonovs, who for some reason had expected the Khripatches on a Sunday, earlier in the day. They were dumbfounded. Varvara was in the kitchen half-dressed and dirty. She rushed away to get dressed and Peredonov received the visitors, looking as if he had been just awakened.
"Varvara will be here immediately," he mumbled, "she's dressing herself. She was working—we have a new servant who doesn't understand our ways. She's a hopeless fool."
Soon Varvara came in, dressed somehow, with a flushed, frightened face. She extended to her visitors a dirty, damp hand, and said in a voice trembling with agitation:
"You must forgive me for keeping you waiting—we didn't expect you on a week-day."
"I seldom go out on a Sunday," said Madame Khripatch. "There are drunkards in the street. I let my servant-maid have her day out."
The conversation somehow started, and the kindness of the Head-Master's wife somewhat encouraged Varvara. Madame Khripatch treated Varvara with a slight contemptuousness, but graciously—as with a repented sinner who had to be treated kindly but who might still soil one's hands. She gave Varvara several hints, as if incidentally, about clothes and housekeeping.