pardon, Mashurina, but in conversation, however--"

"And who asks you to talk to me, pray?"

Paklin gave a nervous, gulpy laugh.

"Well, never mind, my dear. Give me your hand. Don't be cross. I
know you mean well, and so do I... Well?

Paklin extended his hand, Mashurina looked at him severely and
extended her own.

"If you really want to know my name," she said with the same
expression of severity on her face, "I am called Fiekla."

"And I, Pemien," Ostrodumov added in his bass voice.

"How very instructive! Then tell me, 0h Fiekla! and you, Oh Pemien!
why you are so unfriendly, so persistently unfriendly to me when
I--"

"Mashurina thinks," Ostrodumov interrupted him, "and not only
Mashurina, that you are not to be depended upon, because you
always laugh at everything."

Paklin turned round on his heels.

"That is the usual mistake people make about me, my dear Pemien!
In the first place, I am not always laughing, and even if I were,
that is no reason why you should not trust me. In the second, I