Chapter 18 - Page 2

lodger on his safe arrival.

The cornet, Elias Vasilich, was an educated Cossack. He had been
to Russia proper, was a regimental schoolteacher, and above all he
was noble. He wished to appear noble, but one could not help
feeling beneath his grotesque pretence of polish, his affectation,
his self-confidence, and his absurd way of speaking, he was just
the same as Daddy Eroshka. This could also be clearly seen by his
sunburnt face and his hands and his red nose. Olenin asked him to
sit down.

'Good morning. Father Elias Vasilich,' said Eroshka, rising with
(or so it seemed to Olenin) an ironically low bow.

'Good morning. Daddy. So you're here already,' said the cornet,
with a careless nod.

The cornet was a man of about forty, with a grey pointed beard,
skinny and lean, but handsome and very fresh-looking for his age.
Having come to see Olenin he was evidently afraid of being taken
for an ordinary Cossack, and wanted to let Olenin feel his
importance from the first.

'That's our Egyptian Nimrod,' he remarked, addressing Olenin and
pointing to the old man with a self-satisfied smile. 'A mighty
hunter before the Lord! He's our foremost man on every hand.
You've already been pleased to get acquainted with him.'

Daddy Eroshka gazed at his feet in their shoes of wet raw hide and
shook his head thoughtfully at the cornet's ability and learning,
and muttered to himself: 'Gyptian Nimvrod! What things he
invents!'

'Yes, you see we mean to go hunting,' answered Olenin.

'Yes, sir, exactly,' said the cornet, 'but I have a small business
with you.'

'What do you want?'

'Seeing that you are a gentleman,' began the cornet, 'and as I may
understand myself to be in the rank of an officer too, and
therefore we may always progressively negotiate, as gentlemen do.'
(He stopped and looked with a smile at Olenin and at the old man.)
'But if you have the desire with my consent, then, as my wife is a
foolish woman of our class, she could not quite comprehend your
words of yesterday's date. Therefore my quarters might be let for
six rubles to the Regimental Adjutant, without the stables; but I
can always avert that from myself free of charge. But, as you
desire, therefore I, being myself of an officer's rank, can come
to an agreement with you in everything personally, as an
inhabitant of this district, not according to our customs, but can
maintain the conditions in every way....'

'Speaks clearly!' muttered the old man.

The cornet continued in the same strain for a long time. At last,
not without difficulty, Olenin gathered that the cornet wished to
let his rooms to him, Olenin, for six rubles a month. The latter
gladly agreed to this, and