"Eh, eh! Very pretty! Then how do you come to be strolling about like this without a passport?"
"It is my way!"
"Ah, ha! A likely tale! Your gentry do not usually live this wolf's life, eh? You're a poor wretch, you are!"
"Very well—chatter away!" said the poor wretch drily.
Yet Efimushka continued to gaze at the passportless man with ever-increasing curiosity and sympathy, and shaking his head meditatively, continued:
"Ah, yes! How fate plays with a man if you come to think of it? Well, it may be true for all that I know that you are a gentleman, for you have such a majestic bearing. Have you lived long in this guise?"
The man with the majestic bearing looked grimly at Efimushka, and waving him away as if he had been an importunate tuft of hair: "Shut up!" said he, "you keep on like an old woman!"
"Oh, don't be angry!" cried Efimushka soothingly, "I speak from a pure heart—my heart is very good."
"Then you're lucky. But your tongue gallops along without stopping, and that is unlucky for me."
"All right! I will shut up, maybe—indeed, it would be easy to shut up if only a man did not want to hear your conversation. And then, too, you get angry without due cause. Is it my fault that you have taken up the life of a vagabond?"