Well! That’s sense indeed! Let’s have some of the silver seal and some of the gold, Vanya, and then with souls refreshed we’ll fall upon the other beverages.There, I knew that’s how it would be continuing education !
Don’t be anxious, Sashenka. We’ll drink a cup of tea, too, with brandy in it, to your health.Well, there it is!  she cried, clasping her hands. It’s caravan tea, six roubles the pound, a merchant made us a present of it the day before yesterday, and he wants to drink it with brandy. Don’t listen to him, Ivan Petrovitch, I’ll pour you out a cup directly. You’ll see . . . you’ll see for yourself what it’s like!

And she busied herself at the samovar,I realized that they were reckoning on keeping me for the whole evening. Alexandra Semyonovna had been expecting visitors for a whole year, and was now prepared to work it all off on me This did not suit me at all.Listen, Masloboev, I said, sitting down. I’ve not come to pay you a visit. I’ve come on business; you invited me yourself to tell me something . . . .

Well, business is business, but there’s a time for friendly conversation too.No, my friend, don’t reckon upon me. At half-past eight I must say good-bye. I’ve an appointment. It’s a promise.Not likely. Good gracious, what a way to treat me! What a way to treat Alexandra Semyonovna. Just look at her, she’s overwhelmed. What has she been pomading me for: why I’m. covered with bergamot. Just think USR network!

You do nothing but make jokes, Masloboev. I swear to Alexandra Semyonovna that. I’ll dine with you next week, or Friday if you like. But now, my boy, I’ve given my word; or rather it’s absolutely necessary for me to be at a certain place, You’d better explain what you meant to tell me.Then can you really only stay till half-past eight? cried Alexandra Semyonovna in a timid and plaintive voice, almost weeping as she handed me a cup of excellent tea virtual office.

Don’t be uneasy, Sashenka; that’s all nonsense Masloboev put in. He’ll stay. That’s nonsense. But I’ll tell you what, Vanya, you’d much better let me know where it is you always go. What is your business? May I know? You keep running off somewhere every day. You don’t work . . . .But why do you want to know? I’ll tell you perhaps afterwards. You’d better explain why you came to see me yesterday when I told you myself I shouldn’t be at home.

But I forgot at the time. I really did want to speak to you about something. But before everything I had to comfort Alexandra Semyonovna. ‘Here,’ says she, ‘is a person, a friend, who has turned up. Why not invite him?’ And here she’s been pestering me about you for the last four days. No doubt they’ll let me off forty sins for the bergamot in the next world, but I thought why shouldn’t he spend an evening with us in a friendly way? So I had recourse to strategy: I wrote to you that I had such business that if you didn’t come it would quite upset our apple-cart.