A jar of preserves stood on the table, honey in a saucer, toasted cracknels sprinkled with anise-seed, sausage, cucumber, and vodka. All this filled the air with a strong odor. Yevsey grew faint from the oppressive sensation of over-abundance, though he did not dare to decline, and submissively chewed everything set before him.
"Eat!" cried the bald man, then continued his talk with Uncle Piotr. "I tell you, it's luck. It's only a week since the horse crushed the little boy. He went to the tavern for boiling water, when suddenly—"
Another man now made his entrance unnoticed by the others. He, too, was bald, but small and thin, with dark eyeglasses on a large nose, and a long tuft of grey hair on his chin.
"What is it, people?" he asked in a low, indistinct voice.
The master jumped up from his chair, uttered a cry, and laughed aloud. Yevsey was suddenly seized with alarm.
The man addressed Piotr and his hosts as "People," by which he separated himself from them. He sat down at some distance from the table, then moved to one side away from the blacksmith, and looked around moving his thin dry neck slowly. On his head, a little above his forehead, over his right eye, was a large bump. His little pointed ears clung closely to his skull, as if to hide themselves in the short fringe of his grey hair. He produced the impression of a quiet, grey, seedy, person. Yevsey unsuccessfully tried to get a surreptitious peep at his eyes under the glasses. His failure disquieted him.
The host cried:
"Do you understand, Orphan?"
"This is a trump," remarked the man with the bump. He sat supporting his thin dark hands on his sharp knees, and spoke little. Occasionally Yevsey heard the men utter some peculiar words.
At last the newcomer said: