'What have you been doing to your head? You stink of tallow miles off.
You'd better comb your hair.'

Slimak, silently acknowledging the justice of the remark, took a thick
comb from behind the looking-glass and smoothed his hair till it looked
like polished glass, then he applied the soap to his neck so
energetically that his fingers left large, dark streaks.

'Where is Grochowski?' he asked in a more cheerful voice, for the cold
water had added to his good temper.

'He has gone.'

'What about the money?'

'I paid him, but he wouldn't take the thirty-three roubles; he said
that Jesus Christ had lived in this world for thirty-three years, so it
would not be right for him to take as much as that for the cow.'

'Very proper,' Slimak agreed, wishing to impress her with his
theological knowledge, but she turned to the stove and took off a pot
of hot barley soup. Offering it to him with an air of indifference:
'Don't talk so much,' she said. 'Put something hot inside you and go to
the manor-house. But just try and bargain as you did with the Soltys
and I shall have something to say to you.'

He sat humbly, eating his soup, and his wife took some money from the
chest. 'Take these ten roubles,' she said, 'give them to the squire
himself and promise to bring the rest to-morrow. But mind what he asks