"Thank you kindly." And he almost ran to the gate.
"Unrepentant souls, hearts of beasts," hissed in the yard behind him.
In half an hour we were sitting in an inn, having tea and kalatch.[10]
[10] A circular roll made of hard dough.—TR.
"It was as though she was driving a gimlet into me," said Mishka, smiling at me with his good-natured eyes. "I stood there, and thought to myself, oh my goodness! What on earth did I go for? Went for martyrdom. She might, like a sensible woman, have taken the clasps from me and let me go my way; but no, she begins a-talking. What queer people there are! You want to treat them honest, and they go on, at their own, all the time. I tell her straight. 'There, barynia,' I said, 'here are your clasps. Don't blame me.' And she says, 'No,' she says, 'wait a bit—you tell me why you brought them back to me,' and went ahead as if she was pulling the veins out of my body. I broke out into a sweat, with her talking even—truth I did."
And he still smiled with that infinitely gentle smile of his.
Semka, sulky, ruffled, and moody, said to him gravely when he had ended his Odyssey—
"You'd better die outright, you precious blockhead, you! Or else to-morrow, with these fine tricks of yours, the flies or beetles will eat you up."
"How you do talk! Come, let's have a glass. Drink to the ending of the affair!"
And we heartily drank to the ending of this queer affair.