“No advantage, indeed, when it costs him eight rubles here for oats!” said Kraut. “Is there no advantage in not keeping an extra horse?”
“Ask Skvoretz yourself, Vladímir Semyónitch!” said Vlang, returning with Kraut's pipe. “It's a capital horse.”
“The one you tumbled into the ditch with, on the festival of the forty martyrs, in March? Hey! Vlang?” remarked the staff-captain.
“No, and why should you say that it costs eight rubles for oats,” pursued Dyadenko, “when his own inquiries show him that it is ten and a half; of course, he has no object in it.”
“Just as though he would have nothing left! So when you get to be battery commander, you won't let any horses go into the town?”
“When I get to be battery commander, my dear fellow, my horses will get four measures of oats to eat, and I shall not accumulate an income, never fear!”
“If we live, we shall see,” said the staff-captain; “and you will act just so, and so will he when he commands a battery,” he added, pointing at Volodya.
“Why do you think, Friedrich Krestyanitch, that he would turn it to his profit?” broke in Tchernovitzky. “Perhaps he has property of his own; then why should he turn it to profit?”
“No, sir, I ... excuse me, captain,” said Volodya, reddening up to his ears, “that strikes me as insulting.”