THE AGENT
together—we'll take the cook with us, and you'll stay the night with me. Capital! capital!' he added without waiting for my answer.
'C'est arrangé. . . . Hey, you there! Have the carriage brought out, and look sharp. You have never been in Shipilovka? I should be ashamed to suggest your putting up for the night in my agent's cottage, but you're not particular, I know, and at Ryabovo you'd have slept in some hayloft. . . . We will go, we will go!'
And Arkady Pavlitch hummed some French song.
'You don't know, I dare say,' he pursued, swaying from side to side; 'I've some peasants there who pay rent. It's the custom of the place—what was I to do? They pay their rent very punctually, though. I should, I'll own, have put them back to payment in labour, but there's so little land. I really wonder how they manage to make both ends meet. However, c'est leur affaire. My agent there's a fine fellow, une forte tête, a man of real administrative power! You shall see. . . . Really, how luckily things have turned out!'
There was no help for it. Instead of nine o'clock in the morning, we started at two in the afternoon. Sportsmen will sympathise with my impatience. Arkady Pavlitch liked, as he expressed it, to be comfortable when he had the chance, and he took with him such a supply of linen, dainties, wearing apparel, perfumes, pillows,
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