Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/64

40 "There's nothing up here at all. Everything's ag usual."

"Why, your master's beginning to carry on like anything. By rights he ought to report himself to the police," said the porter very sternly.

The watch-chain on his paunch heaved indignantly.

Matrena suddenly sat down on a box and burst out crying.

"Don't talk about it, Sidor Pavlovitch," she began. "We've really been wondering what's the matter with him,—we can't make it out."

"What's the reason? What's the cause?" exclaimed the porter, indignantly. "Can such things be?"

"The only comfort about it," said the cook, sobbing, "is, that he eats less."

The longer he lived, the smaller he got.

And the servants, and the tailors, and all with whom Saranin had to come in contact, treated him with unconcealed contempt. He would race along to business, tiny, hardly managing to lug his huge portfolio with both hands, and behind him he heard the malicious laughter of the hall-porter, the door-keeper, cabmen, urchins.

"Little shrimp," the head porter would remark.

Saranin had to swallow many a bitter draught.