"Hire somebody; why should you do it yourself?" said Peredonov.
"And she deserves it—honest to God!" said Volodin animatedly. "A girl who won't get married and yet lets young fellows in through the window! That means that human beings have no shame or conscience!"
[1] "Piatachek" means a "five kopek piece" and also a "pig's snout." Routilov puns on the word.
[2] Durman, the thorn apple or datura, a very poisonous plant. The Russians have a verb "durmanised," meaning bewitched or stupefied by the durman.
[3] Zakouska, savoury salt eatables, rather like hors d'oeuvres, eaten with vodka.
[4] A journal of revolutionary tendencies, suppressed in 1881.
[CHAPTER VI]
The next day Peredonov and Volodin went to see the Adamenko girl. Volodin was in his best clothes; he put on his new, tight-fitting frock-coat, a clean-laundered shirt and a brightly-coloured cravat. He smeared his hair with pomade and scented himself—he was in fine spirits.
Nadezhda Vassilyevna Adamenko lived with her brother in town in her own red-brick house; she had an estate not far from town which she let on lease. Two years before she had completed a course in the local college and now she occupied herself in lying on a couch to read books of every description and in coaching her brother, an eleven-year-old schoolboy, who always protected himself against his sister's severities by saying: