“And you, Ossip Ignatievitch,” continued the same voice in the tent, addressing the sleeping commissary, “will you have a drink? You have slept enough; it is almost five o’clock.”
“Enough of that old joke. You see well enough that I am not asleep,” replied a shrill and lazy voice.
“Get up, then, for I am tired of it,” and the officer rejoined his guests. “Give us some Sympheropol porter!” he shouted to his servant.
The latter, pushing against Volodia proudly, as it appeared to the young man, pulled out from under the bench a bottle of the porter called for.
The bottle had been empty some time, but the conversation was still going on, when the flap of the tent was put aside to let pass a small man in a blue dressing-gown with cord and tassel, and a cap trimmed with red braid and ornamented with a cockade.
With lowered eyes, and twisting his black mustache, he only replied to the officer’s salute by an imperceptible movement of the shoulders.
“Give me a glass,” he said, sitting down near the table. “Surely you have just come from Petersburg, young man?” he said, addressing Volodia with an amiable air.
“Yes, and I am going to Sebastopol.”
“Of your own accord?”
“Yes.”