'Why? Do the merchants pay more wages?'
'Lord preserve us! Why, a merchant would soon give you the sack if you asked him for wages. No, at a merchant's you must live on trust and on fear. He'll give you food, and drink, and clothes, and all. If you give him satisfaction, he'll do more…. Talk of wages, indeed! You don't need them…. And a merchant, too, lives in plain Russian style, like ourselves; you go with him on a journey—he has tea, and you have it; what he eats, you eat. A merchant … one can put up with; a merchant's a very different thing from what a gentleman is; a merchant's not whimsical; if he's out of temper, he'll give you a blow, and there it ends. He doesn't nag nor sneer…. But with a gentleman it's a woeful business! Nothing's as he likes it—this is not right, and that he can't fancy. You hand him a glass of water or something to eat: "Ugh, the water stinks! positively stinks!" You take it out, stay a minute outside the door, and bring it back: "Come, now, that's good; this doesn't stink now." And as for the ladies, I tell you, the ladies are something beyond everything!… and the young ladies above all!…'
'Fedyushka!' came the fat man's voice from the office.
The clerk went out quickly. I drank a glass of tea, lay down on the sofa, and fell asleep. I slept for two hours.
When I woke, I meant to get up, but I was overcome by laziness; I closed my eyes, but did not fall asleep again. On the other side of the partition, in the office, they were talking in subdued voices. Unconsciously I began to listen.
'Quite so, quite so, Nikolai Eremyitch,' one voice was saying; 'quite so. One can't but take that into account; yes, certainly!… Hm!' (The speaker coughed.)
'You may believe me, Gavrila Antonitch,' replied the fat man's voice: 'don't I know how things are done here? Judge for yourself.'
'Who does, if you don't, Nikolai Eremyitch? you're, one may say, the first person here. Well, then, how's it to be?' pursued the voice I did not recognise; 'what decision are we to come to, Nikolai Eremyitch? Allow me to put the question.'
'What decision, Gavrila Antonitch? The thing depends, so to say, on you; you don't seem over anxious.'
'Upon my word, Nikolai Eremyitch, what do you mean? Our business is trading, buying; it's our business to buy. That's what we live by, Nikolai Eremyitch, one may say.'