'Well, and what were you under the father of your first mistress?' 'I had different duties; at first I found myself a page; I have been a postilion, a gardener, and a whipper-in.' 'A whipper-in?... And did you ride out with the hounds?' 'Yes, I rode with the hounds, and was nearly killed; I fell off my horse, and the horse was injured. Our old master was very severe; he ordered them to flog me, and to send me to learn a trade to Moscow, to a shoemaker.' 'To learn a trade? But you weren't a child, I suppose, when you were a whipper-in?' 'I was twenty and over then.' 'But could you learn a trade at twenty?' 'I suppose one could, some way, since the master ordered it. But he luckily died soon after, and they sent me back to the country.' 'And when were you taught to cook?' Sutchok lifted his thin yellowish little old face and grinned. 'Is that a thing to be taught?... Old women can cook.' 'Well,' I commented, 'you have seen many things, Kuzma, in your time! What do you do now as a fisherman, seeing there are no fish?' 'Oh, your honour, I don't complain. And, thank God, they made me a fisherman. Why another old man like me--Andrey Pupir--the mistress ordered to be put into the paper factory, as a ladler. "It's a sin," she said, "to eat bread in idleness." And Pupir had even hoped for favour; his cousin's son was clerk in the mistress's counting-house: he had promised to send his name up to the mistress, to remember him: a fine way he remembered him!... And Pupir fell at his cousin's knees before my eyes.' 'Have you a family? Have you married?' 'No, your honour, I have never been married. Tatyana Vassilyevna--God rest her soul!--did not allow anyone to marry. "God forbid!" she said sometimes, "here am I living single: what indulgence! What are they thinking of!"' 'What do you live on now? Do you get wages?' 'Wages, your honour!... Victuals are given me, and thanks be to Thee, Lord! I am very contented. May God give our lady long life!' Yermolaï returned. 'The boat is repaired,' he announced churlishly. 'Go after your pole--you there!' Sutchok ran to get his pole. During the whole time of my conversation with the poor old man, the sportsman Vladimir had been staring at him with a contemptuous smile. 'A stupid fellow,' was his comment, when the latter had gone off; 'an absolutely uneducated fellow; a peasant, nothing more. One cannot even call him a house-serf, and he was boasting all the time. How could he be an actor, be pleased to judge for yourself! You were pleased to trouble yourself for no good in talking to him.'