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76 don't listen to fools! You're a brave fellow; we'll get up a scandal before long. Lord! what a devil he is!"

"Black—black—nothing more," Polzikov morosely insisted.

"Nay, Kostya, you don't understand the matter," Semyon Vasilyevich mildly declared; and so they went on, rolling and racketting, quarrelling, and jostling one another, but thoroughly contented.

At the end of a week the whole Department knew that the civil servant, Kotel'nikov, was very fond of negresses. By the end of a month the porters of the neighbouring houses, the petitioners, and the policeman on duty at the corner, knew it too. The ladies who worked the typewriters took to looking at Semyon Vasilyevich from the adjoining rooms; but he sat quiet and modest, and still was not sure whether he would be praised or thrashed. Already he had been at an evening party at Anton Ivanovich's, had drunk tea with cherry jam upon a new damask tablecloth, and had explained that about negresses there was something exotic. The ladies looked confused, but the hostess's daughter Nastenka, who had read novels, blinked her shortsighted eyes, and, adjusting her curls, asked:

"But, why?"

And all were very much pleased; but when the interesting guest had departed they spoke of him with the greatest compassion, and Nastenka