‘How is it you never come to see us, Onisim Sergeitch?’ Onisim glanced morosely at her. ‘What should I come for? you wouldn’t give me a cup of tea, no fear.’ ‘Yes, I would, Onisim Sergeitch, I would. You come and see. Rum in it, too.’ Onisim slowly relaxed into a smile. ‘Well, I don’t mind if I do, then.’ ‘When, then--when?’ ‘When ... well, you are ...’ ‘To-day--this evening, if you like. Drop in. ‘All right, I’ll come along,’ replied Onisim, and he sauntered home with his slow, rolling step. The same evening in a little room, beside a bed covered with a striped eider-down, Onisim was sitting at a clumsy little table, facing Vassilissa. A huge, dingy yellow samovar was hissing and bubbling on the table; a pot of geranium stood in the window; in the other corner near the door there stood aslant an ugly chest with a tiny hanging lock; on the chest lay a shapeless heap of all sorts of old rags; on the walls were black, greasy prints. Onisim and Vassilissa drank their tea in silence, looking straight at each other, turning the lumps of sugar over and over in their hands, as it were reluctantly nibbling them, blinking, screwing up their eyes, and with a hissing sound sucking in the yellowish boiling liquid through their teeth. At last they had emptied the whole samovar, turned upside down the round cups--one with the inscription, ‘Take your fill’; the other with the words, ‘Cupid’s dart hath pierced my heart’--then they cleared their throats, wiped their perspiring brows, and gradually dropped into conversation. ‘Onisim Sergeitch, how about your master ...’ began Vassilissa, and did not finish her sentence. ‘What about my master?’ replied Onisim, and he leaned on his hand. ‘He’s all right. But why do you ask?’ ‘Oh, I only asked,’ answered Vassilissa. ‘But I say’--(here Onisim grinned)--‘I say, he wrote you a letter, didn’t he?’ ‘Yes, he did.’ Onisim shook his head with an extraordinarily self-satisfied air. ‘So he did, did he?’ he said huskily, with a smile. ‘Well, and what did he say in his letter to you?’ ‘Oh, all sorts of things. “I didn’t mean anything, Madam, Vassilissa Timofyevna,” says he, “don’t you think anything of it; don’t you be offended, madam,” and a lot more like that he wrote.... But I say,’ she added after a brief silence: ‘what’s he like?’ ‘He’s all right,’ Onisim responded indifferently. ‘Does he get angry?’ ‘He get angry! Not he. Why, do you like him?’ Vassilissa looked down and giggled in her sleeve. ‘Come,’ grumbled Onisim. ‘Oh, what’s that to you, Onisim Sergeitch?’ ‘Oh, come, I tell you.’ ‘Well,’ Vassilissa brought out at last, ‘he’s ... a gentleman. Of course ... I ... and besides; he ... you know yourself ...’ ‘Of course I do,’ Onisim observed solemnly. ‘Of course you’re aware, to be sure, Onisim Sergeitch.’ ... Vassilissa was obviously becoming agitated. ‘You tell him, your master, that I’m ...; say, not angry with him, but that ...’ She stammered.