'Who's that?' asked Sanin with the bad habit of asking questions characteristic of all Russians.
'Oh, a Frenchman, there are lots of them here ... He's dancing attendance on me too. It's time for our coffee, though. Let's go home; you must be hungry by this time, I should say. My better half must have got his eye-peeps open by now.'
'Better half! Eye-peeps!' Sanin repeated to himself ... 'And speaks French so well ... what a strange creature!'
* * * * *
Maria Nikolaevna was not mistaken. When she went back into the hotel with Sanin, her 'better half or 'dumpling' was already seated, the invariable fez on his head, before a table laid for breakfast.
'I've been waiting for you!' he cried, making a sour face. 'I was on the point of having coffee without you.'
'Never mind, never mind,' Maria Nikolaevna responded cheerfully. 'Are you angry? That's good for you; without that you'd turn into a mummy altogether. Here I've brought a visitor. Make haste and ring! Let us have coffee--the best coffee--in Saxony cups on a snow-white cloth!'
She threw off her hat and gloves, and clapped her hands.
Polozov looked at her from under his brows.
'What makes you so skittish to-day, Maria Nikolaevna?' he said in an undertone.
'That's no business of yours, Ippolit Sidoritch! Ring! Dimitri Pavlovitch, sit down and have some coffee for the second time. Ah, how nice it is to give orders! There's no pleasure on earth like it!'
'When you're obeyed,' grumbled her husband again.
'Just so, when one's obeyed! That's why I'm so happy! Especially with you. Isn't it so, dumpling? Ah, here's the coffee.'
On the immense tray, which the waiter brought in, there lay also a playbill. Maria Nikolaevna snatched it up at once.
'A drama!' she pronounced with indignation, 'a German drama. No matter; it's better than a German comedy. Order a box for me--baignoire--or no ... better the Fremden-Loge,' she turned to the waiter. 'Do you hear: the Fremden-Loge it must be!'
'But if the Fremden-Loge has been already taken by his excellency, the director of the town (seine Excellenz der Herr Stadt-Director),' the waiter ventured to demur.
'Give his excellency ten thalers, and let the box be mine! Do you hear!'
The waiter bent his head humbly and mournfully.
'Dimitri Pavlovitch, you will go with me to the theatre? the German actors are awful, but you will go ... Yes? Yes? How obliging you are! Dumpling, are you not coming?
'You settle it,' Polozov observed into the cup he had lifted to his lips.