Part 58

"'Very well,' I said: and off we set. On the way I said again: 'Gubin, though you may not like to be told so, you are no better than a thief.'"

The o's uttered by this peasant are uniformly round and firm--they roll forward as a cartwheel trundles along a hot, dusty country road.

The youth with the high cheek-bones fixes the whites of his porcine eyes (eyes the pupils of which are as indeterminate as the eyes of a blind man) upon the woman in the green scarf. Then, having, like a calf, plucked and chewed some stalks of the withered grass, he rolls up the sleeves of his shirt, bends one fist into the crook of the elbow, and says to Konev with a glance at the well-developed muscle:

"Should you care to hit me?"

"No, you can hit yourself. Hit yourself over the head. Then, perhaps, you'll grow wiser."

Stolidly the young fellow looks at Konev, and inquires:

"How do you know me to be a fool?"

"Because your personality tells me so."

"Eh?" cries the young fellow truculently as he raises himself to a kneeling posture. "How know you what I am?"

"I have been told what you are by the Governor of your province."

The young fellow opens his mouth, and stares at Konev. Then he asks:

"To what province do I belong?"

"If you yourself have forgotten to what province you belong, you had better try and loosen your wits."

"Look here. If I were to hit you, I--"

The woman who has been sewing drops her work to shrug one rounded shoulder as though she were cold, and ask conciliatorily:

"Well, WHAT province do you belong to?"

"I?" the young fellow re-echoes as he subsides on to his heels. "I belong to Penza. Why do you ask?"

"Oh never mind why."

Presently, with a strangely youthful laugh, the woman adds in a murmur:

"I ask because I too belong to that province."

"And to which canton?"

"To that of Penza." In the woman's tone is a touch of pride.

The young fellow squats down before her, as before a wood fire, stretches out his hands, and says in an ingratiating voice:

"What a fine place is our cantonal town! What churches and shops and stone houses there are in it! In fact, one shop sells a machine on which you can play anything you like, any sort of a tune!"

"As well as, probably, the fool," comments Konev in an undertone, though the young fellow is too enthralled with the memory of the amenities of his cantonal capital to notice the remark. Next, smacking his lips, and chewing his words, he continues in a murmur:

"In those stone houses."

Here the woman drops her sewing a second time to inquire: "Is there a convent there?"

"A convent?"