Zakhár went to his room, but he had hardly laid his hand on his couch to climb up to it before the imperative cry was heard again:—
"Zakhár! Zakhár!"
"Oh, good Lord!" grumbled he, as he started to go for the third time to Oblómof's library. "What a torment all this is! Oh that death would come and take me from it!"
"What do you want?" he asked, as he stood with one hand on the door, and glaring at Oblómof as a sign of his surliness, at such an angle that he had to look at his master out of the corner of his eyes; while his master could see only one of his enormous side-whiskers, so bushy that you might have expected to have two or three birds come flying out from them.
"My handkerchief, quick! You might have known what I wanted. Don't you see?" remarked Ílya Ílyitch sternly.
Zakhár displayed no special dissatisfaction or surprise at such an order or such a reproach on his master's part, regarding both, so far as he was concerned, as perfectly natural.
"But who knows where your handkerchief is?" he grumbled, circling about the room and making a careful examination of every chair, although it could be plainly seen that there was nothing whatever on them.
"It is a perfect waste of time," he remarked, opening the door into the drawing-room in order to see if there was any sign of it there.
"Where are you going? Look for it here; I have not been in that room since day before yesterday. And make haste," urged Ílya Ílyitch.
"Where is the handkerchief? There isn't any handkerchief," exclaimed Zakhár rummaging and searching in every corner.