But the left-handed man says: "I don't know them."
The Englishmen reply: "That's not a weighty matter—you can learn to know them: we will arrange a grendezvous for you."
The left-handed man was abashed. "Why," says he, "worry the girls vainly?" and he refused. "A grendezvous," says he, "is a matter for the gentry, and not suitable for such as me, and if folks were to hear of that at home, in Tula, they would ridicule me greatly."
The Englishmen became curious: "But if you don't have grendezvous," say they, "how do you manage in such cases to make a pleasing choice?"
The left-handed man explained to them our position. "With us," says he, "when a man wishes to display a more particular intention with regard to a girl, he sends the confabulation-woman, and when she makes the proposal, then we go together, very politely, to the house, and we look the girl over, not in secrecy, but in the presence of all her relatives."
They understood, but answered that they had no confabulation-women, and such a custom was not in practice, but the left-handed man said: "That's all the more agreeable, because if you are going to occupy yourself with such a matter, it must be with a definite intention, and as I do not feel that towards a foreign nation, then why torment the girls?"
He pleased the Englishmen in these arguments, also, so that they again began to clap him on the shoulders and the knees, with pleasantness, and asked: "We would just like to know, out of mere curiosity: what defect have you observed in our girls, and why do you shun them?"
Thereupon the left-handed man answered them frankly: "I accuse them of no defect, but what does not please me is that their dress sort of flutters about them, and one cannot make out what they have on, and for what purpose; first there is some sort of thing or other, and underneath there's another pinned on, and on their arms are some sort of leglets or other. Their plush cloak is exactly like an ape—a sapajou."
The Englishmen burst out laughing and say: "Where's the objection in that?"
"There's no objection," replies the left-handed man, "only I'm afraid it would make me blush to watch and wait while she is getting herself out of all that."