'There's no mistake,' he said at last, 'you couldn't give offence to any one, Mr. Paklin, and you don't want to; and why shouldn't you go to Mr. Golushkin's? We shall, I should fancy, spend our time just as pleasantly there as at your cousin's, and just as profitably.'
Paklin shook his finger at him.
'Oh! I see there's malice in you too! But you're going to Golushkin's yourself, aren't you?'
'To be sure I'm going. To-day's a day lost, any way.'
'Well then, en avant, marchons, to the twentieth century! to the twentieth century! Nezhdanov, you're an advanced man, lead the way!'
'All right, come along; only, don't repeat the same jokes too often, for fear of our thinking you 're running out of your stock.'
'There'll always be plenty at your service,' retorted Paklin gaily, and he hurried, advancing, as he said, not by leaps and bounds, but by limps and bounds.
'An amusing chap, very,' Solomin remarked as he walked behind him arm-in-arm with Nezhdanov; 'if─which God forbid─they send us all to Siberia, there'll be some one to amuse us!'
Markelov walked in silence behind the rest.
Meanwhile in the house of the merchant
233
