"Then you may order the captain of the guard to be as alert as possible." "I will." The major blinked his eyes, and went into a brown study. "Well, tell the boys to get their supper." "That's what they're doing now." "Good! then you may go. Well,"[23] continued the major with a conciliating smile, and taking up the thread of the conversation that we had dropped, "we were reckoning what an officer needed: let us finish the calculation." "We need one uniform and trousers, don't we?"[24] "Yes. That, let us suppose would amount to fifty rubles every two years; say, twenty-five rubles a year for dress. Then for eating we need every day at least forty kopeks, don't we?[25]" "Yes, certainly as much as that." "Well, I'll call it so. Now, for a horse and saddle for remount, thirty rubles; that's all. Twenty-five and a hundred and twenty and thirty make a hundred and seventy-five rubles. All the rest stands for luxuries,--for tea and for sugar and for tobacco,--twenty rubles. Will you look it over?... It's right, isn't it, Nikoláï Feódoruitch?" "Not quite. Excuse me, Abram Ilyitch," said the adjutant timidly, "nothing is left for tea and sugar. You reckon one suit for every two years, but here in field-service you can't get along with one pair of pantaloons and boots. Why, I wear out a new pair almost every month. And then linen, shirts, handkerchiefs, and leg-wrappers: all that sort of thing one has to buy. And when you have accounted for it, there isn't any thing left at all. That's true, by God![26] Abram Ilyitch." "Yes, it's splendid to wear leg-wrappers," said Kraft suddenly, after a moment's silence, with a loving emphasis on the word "leg-wrappers;"[27] "you know it's simply Russian fashion." "I will tell you," remarked Trosenko, "it all amounts to this, that our brother imagines that we have nothing to eat; but the fact is, that we all live, and have tea to drink, and tobacco to smoke, and our vodka to drink. If _you_ served with me," he added, turning to the ensign, "you would soon learn how to live. I suppose you gentlemen know how he treated his _denshchik_." And Trosenko, dying with laughter, told us the whole story of the ensign and his man, though we had all heard it a thousand times. "What makes you look so rosy, brother?" he continued, pointing to the ensign, who turned red, broke into a perspiration, and smiled with such constraint that it was painful to look at him. "It's all right, brother. I used to be just like you; but now, you see, I have become hardened. Just let any young fellow come here from Russia,--we have seen 'em,--and here they would get all sorts of rheumatism and spasms; but look at me sitting here: it's my home, and bed, and all. You see" ... Here he drank still another glass of vodka. "Hah?" he continued, looking straight into Kraft's eyes. "That's what I like in you. He's a genuine old _Kavkázets._ Kive us your hant."