bigger than the other, as though he had lain too long on it.

"Your honour was graciously pleased to buy the place without the
furniture," he brought out irresolutely; "I remember."

"Hold your tongue!" shouted the engineer; he turned crimson and
shook with anger . . . and the echo in the garden loudly repeated
his shout.

XII

When I was doing anything in the garden or the yard, Moisey would
stand beside me, and folding his arms behind his back he would stand
lazily and impudently staring at me with his little eyes. And this
irritated me to such a degree that I threw up my work and went away.

From Stepan we heard that Moisey was Madame Tcheprakov's lover. I
noticed that when people came to her to borrow money they addressed
themselves first to Moisey, and once I saw a peasant, black from
head to foot--he must have been a coalheaver--bow down at
Moisey's feet. Sometimes, after a little whispering, he gave out
money himself, without consulting his mistress, from which I concluded
that he did a little business on his own account.

He used to shoot in our garden under our windows, carried off
victuals from our cellar, borrowed our horses without asking
permission, and we were indignant and began to feel as though
Dubetchnya were not ours, and Masha would say, turning pale:

"Can we really have to go on living with these reptiles another