to be here!"

"Are you out of your senses, sir, bless you? Do you think I'd be
such a fool? Here one's running about all day long, never a minute
to sit down and then spoken to like this at night! Four roubles a
month . . . and to find my own tea and sugar and this is all the
credit I get for it! I used to live in a tradesman's house, and
never met with such insult there!"

"Come, come--no need to go over your grievances! This very minute
your grenadier must turn out! Do you understand?"

"You ought to be ashamed, sir," said Pelagea, and he could hear the
tears in her voice. "Gentlefolks . . . educated, and yet not a
notion that with our hard lot . . . in our life of toil"--she
burst into tears. "It's easy to insult us. There's no one to stand
up for us."

"Come, come . . . I don't mind! Your mistress sent me. You may let
a devil in at the window for all I care!"

There was nothing left for the assistant procurator but to acknowledge
himself in the wrong and go back to his spouse.

"I say, Pelagea," he said, "you had my dressing-gown to brush. Where
is it?"

"Oh, I am so sorry, sir; I forgot to put it on your chair. It's
hanging on a peg near the stove."