The Darling and Other Stories. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

thing! I wonder where she is now?' Even now I bet you he boasts among his friends that he's got his eye on a little dressmaker."

      Polinka sits down and gazes pensively at the pile of white boxes.

      "No, I won't take the feather trimming," she sighs. "Mamma had better choose it for herself; I may get the wrong one. I want six yards of fringe for an overcoat, at forty kopecks the yard. For the same coat I want cocoa-nut buttons, perforated, so they can be sown on firmly.."

      Nikolay Timofeitch wraps up the fringe and the buttons. She looks at him guiltily and evidently expects him to go on talking, but he remains sullenly silent while he tidies up the feather trimming.

      "I mustn't forget some buttons for a dressing-gown." she says after an interval of silence, wiping her pale lips with a handkerchief.

      "What kind?"

      "It's for a shopkeeper's wife, so give me something rather striking."

      "Yes, if it's for a shopkeeper's wife, you'd better have something bright. Here are some buttons. A combination of colours-red, blue, and the fashionable gold shade. Very glaring. The more refined prefer dull black with a bright border. But I don't understand. Can't you see for yourself? What can these.. walks lead to?"

      "I don't know," whispers Polinka, and she bends over the buttons; "I don't know myself what's come to me, Nikolay Timofeitch."

      A solid shopman with whiskers forces his way behind Nikolay Timofeitch's back, squeezing him to the counter, and beaming with the choicest gallantry, shouts:

      "Be so kind, madam, as to step into this department. We have three kinds of jerseys: plain, braided, and trimmed with beads! Which may I have the pleasure of showing you?"

      At the same time a stout lady passes by Polinka, pronouncing in a rich, deep voice, almost a bass:

      "They must be seamless, with the trade mark stamped in them, please."

      "Pretend to be looking at the things," Nikolay Timofeitch whispers, bending down to Polinka with a forced smile. "Dear me, you do look pale and ill; you are quite changed. He'll throw you over, Pelagea Sergeevna! Or if he does marry you, it won't be for love but from hunger; he'll be tempted by your money. He'll furnish himself a nice home with your dowry, and then be ashamed of you. He'll keep you out of sight of his friends and visitors, because you're uneducated. He'll call you 'my dummy of a wife.' You wouldn't know how to behave in a doctor's or lawyer's circle. To them you're a dressmaker, an ignorant creature."

      "Nikolay Timofeitch!" somebody shouts from the other end of the shop. "The young lady here wants three yards of ribbon with a metal stripe. Have we any?"

      Nikolay Timofeitch turns in that direction, smirks and shouts:

      "Yes, we have! Ribbon with a metal stripe, ottoman with a satin stripe, and satin with a moiré stripe!"

      "Oh, by the way, I mustn't forget, Olga asked me to get her a pair of stays!" says Polinka.

      "There are tears in your eyes," says Nikolay Timofeitch in dismay. "What's that for? Come to the corset department, I'll screen you – it looks awkward."

      With a forced smile and exaggeratedly free and easy manner, the shopman rapidly conducts Polinka to the corset department and conceals her from the public eye behind a high pyramid of boxes.

      "What sort of corset may I show you?" he asks aloud, whispering immediately: "Wipe your eyes!"

      "I want.. I want.. size forty-eight centimetres. Only she wanted one, lined.. with real whalebone.. I must talk to you, Nikolay Timofeitch. Come to-day!"

      "Talk? What about? There's nothing to talk about."

      "You are the only person who.. cares about me, and I've no one to talk to but you."

      "These are not reed or steel, but real whalebone… What is there for us to talk about? It's no use talking… You are going for a walk with him to-day, I suppose?"

      "Yes; I.. I am."

      "Then what's the use of talking? Talk won't help… You are in love, aren't you?"

      "Yes." Polinka whispers hesitatingly, and big tears gush from her eyes.

      "What is there to say?" mutters Nikolay Timofeitch, shrugging his shoulders nervously and turning pale. "There's no need of talk… Wipe your eyes, that's all. I.. I ask for nothing."

      At that moment a tall, lanky shopman comes up to the pyramid of boxes, and says to his customer:

      "Let me show you some good elastic garters that do not impede the circulation, certified by medical authority."

      Nikolay Timofeitch screens Polinka, and, trying to conceal her emotion and his own, wrinkles his face into a smile and says aloud:

      "There are two kinds of lace, madam: cotton and silk! Oriental, English, Valenciennes, crochet, torchon, are cotton. And rococo, soutache, Cambray, are silk… For God's sake, wipe your eyes! They're coming this way!"

      And seeing that her tears are still gushing he goes on louder than ever:

      "Spanish, Rococo, soutache, Cambray.. stockings, thread, cotton, silk."

      ANYUTA

      IN the cheapest room of a big block of furnished apartments Stepan Klotchkov, a medical student in his third year, was walking to and fro, zealously conning his anatomy. His mouth was dry and his forehead perspiring from the unceasing effort to learn it by heart.

      In the window, covered by patterns of frost, sat on a stool the girl who shared his room-Anyuta, a thin little brunette of five-and-twenty, very pale with mild grey eyes. Sitting with bent back she was busy embroidering with red thread the collar of a man's shirt. She was working against time… The clock in the passage struck two drowsily, yet the little room had not been put to rights for the morning. Crumpled bed-clothes, pillows thrown about, books, clothes, a big filthy slop-pail filled with soap-suds in which cigarette ends were swimming, and the litter on the floor-all seemed as though purposely jumbled together in one confusion..

      "The right lung consists of three parts." Klotchkov repeated. "Boundaries! Upper part on anterior wall of thorax reaches the fourth or fifth rib, on the lateral surface, the fourth rib.. behind to the _spina scapulæ_.."

      Klotchkov raised his eyes to the ceiling, striving to visualise what he had just read. Unable to form a clear picture of it, he began feeling his upper ribs through his waistcoat.

      "These ribs are like the keys of a piano," he said. "One must familiarise oneself with them somehow, if one is not to get muddled over them. One must study them in the skeleton and the living body.. I say, Anyuta, let me pick them out."

      Anyuta put down her sewing, took off her blouse, and straightened herself up. Klotchkov sat down facing her, frowned, and began counting her ribs.

      "H'm!.. One can't feel the first rib; it's behind the shoulder-blade.. This must be the second rib… Yes.. this is the third.. this is the fourth… H'm!.. yes… Why are you wriggling?"