upon his knees, and doubled himself into a hook. My exhausted mother, tortured by the noise, red from prolonged ironing, watched the endless measuring, and said with gravity —
“Be careful, Spiridon, God will punish you if you spoil the cloth! If you make a failure you will never be happy again!”
Spiridon got red in the face and sweated, because he was firmly convinced already that he would make a failure. For making my suit he charged one rouble and twenty kopecks, for Pobiedimsky's two roubles, we supplying cloth, lining, and buttons; and this seems moderate enough when you learn that Novostroefka was ten versts away, and that the tailor came to try on at least four times. When during these operations we dragged on the tight trousers and skimpy jackets, still decked with basting threads, my mother frowned critically, and exclaimed —
“God knows what the fashions nowadays are like! They're painful even to look at! If it weren't for your uncle's visit, I'd ignore the fashion,” And Spiridon, rejoiced that the fashions, not he, were guilty, shrugged his shoulders, and sighed as if to say —
“What are you to do? It's the spirit of the age.”
The tension in which we waited our guest can be compared only with the emotion of spirit-rappers expecting a ghost. . . . My mother complained of headache, cried all day, and, as for me, I could
