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266 been tired of giving private lessons this long time, and why, or in what family, and of what special pupils he is tired, and how he is not tired of his occupation in the counting-room of the factory, because it is important, and he has a great influence over all the factory-hands, and how he has succeeded in doing something there; how he has enabled those who desired to learn to read and write; how he has taught them how to learn their letters; how he has succeeded in getting from the firm a salary for the teachers, by proving that the workmen would in this way ruin less machinery and less work, because in this way there would be less idleness and drunken eyes,—of course it was a trifling salary; and how he keeps the working people from drinking, and in order to do this he has often been to their saloons,—and a great deal of the same sort of talk. But the principal thing was this, that he has made himself solid with the firm as an active, energetic man, and he has been gradually getting the business into his own control, so that the conclusion of his story and the main flavor of it for Lopukhóf consisted in this: he has accepted the place as acting manager of the factory. The nominal manager would be an honorary person from the firm itself, with an honorary salary, but the active manager would be Lopukhóf himself: the member of the firm accepted the position of nominal manager only on this condition: "I," says he, "cannot do it; how can I?"—"You take the name then, so that an honorable man may have it, and there will be no need for you to trouble yourself, for I will do everything."—"If that is the case, all right then; I will take the position." But the importance does not lie in his having the power, but in the fact that he is to have a salary of three thousand five hundred rubles—nearly a thousand rubles more than all taken together that he had received from his occasional hard literary work and from his pupils and from his former place in the factory; consequently he can give up everything now except the factory, and that is splendid. And all this takes more than half an hour to relate; and at the end of the story Viéra Pavlovna is able to say that it is really good, and she is able to arrange her hair and go to dinner.

And after dinner Masha gets eight silver kopeks for an izvoshchik, to take her in four different directions, to carry notes from Lopukhóf, saying, "I am at leisure, gentlemen, and I should be glad to have you come to see me." And