With a small brush he violently effaced the whole row of his stakes chalked on the cloth and wrote down a total of ninety-four in huge figures.
“But I must ask you, the inn——”
Conu Costache turned his chair right round.
“Mrs. Raluca, to-morrow afternoon my wife and I are going to our country-house—we will come and pick you up. In this way you will see how they cut down the wood on the right; you will see how the storks walk by the lake on the left; you will see how they have repaired the bridges; you will see how they have renovated the inn at the cross-gates; you will see what a nice house Ionitza Andrescu from Ulmi has built; you will see what big reservoirs the Aurora factory have erected by the road....”
Mrs. Raluca understood and took her departure, telling her beads as she went, but even when she had passed into the third room Conu Costache still continued, while the others were convulsed with laughter:
“You will see how illegible the figures on the 76 milestone have become; you will see how the boys have broken the insulators on the telegraph posts by throwing stones at them; you will see how the geese hiss when the carriage passes by; you will see——”
Then, turning back to his partners, who laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks, he groaned: