off, responded angrily. "Don't you see the young lady?"

"The young lady!" someone mimicked in another corner.

"Swinish crow!"

"We meant nothing..." said the little man in confusion. "I beg
your pardon. We pay with our money and the young lady with hers.
Good-morning!"

"Good-morning," answered the schoolmistress.

"And we thank you most feelingly."

Marya Vassilyevna drank her tea with satisfaction, and she, too,
began turning red like the peasants, and fell to thinking again about
firewood, about the watchman....

"Stay, old man," she heard from the next table, "it's the schoolmistress
from Vyazovye.... We know her; she's a good young lady."

"She's all right!"

The swing-door was continually banging, some coming in, others going
out. Marya Vassilyevna sat on, thinking all the time of the same
things, while the concertina went on playing and playing. The patches of
sunshine had been on the floor, then they passed to the counter, to the
wall, and disappeared altogether; so by the sun it was past midday. The
peasants at the next table were getting ready to go. The little man,
somewhat unsteadily, went up to Marya Vassilyevna and held out his hand