"Have you matches?"
I replied in the affirmative.
"And some tobacco?"
For awhile he continued to contemplate the sun where that luminary hung suspended above a cloud-bank before finally declining. Then he remarked:
"Give me a pinch of the tobacco. As for matches, I have some."
So both of us lit up; after which he rested his elbows upon the balustrade of the bridge, leant back against the central stanchions, and for some time continued merely to emit and inhale blue coils of smoke. Then his nose wrinkled, and he expectorated.
"Muscovite tobacco is it?" he inquired.
"No—Roman, Italian."
"Oh!" And as the wrinkles of his nose straightened themselves again he added: "Then of course it is good tobacco."
To enter a dwelling in advance of one's host is a breach of decorum; wherefore, I found myself forced to remain standing where I was until my interlocutor's tale of questions as to my precise identity, my exact place of origin, my true destination, and my real reasons for travelling should tardily win its way to a finish. Greatly the process vexed me, for I was eager, rather, to learn what the steppe settlement might have in store for my delectation.