'To be sure I did,' replied Pyetushkov: 'with special enjoyment.'
Vassilissa continued to walk on and to laugh.
'It's pleasant weather to-day,' pursued Ivan Afanasiitch: 'do you often go out walking?'
'Yes.'
'Ah, how I should like . . .'
'What say?'
The girls in our district utter those words in a very queer way, with a peculiar sharpness and rapidity. . . Partridges call at sunset with just that sound.
'To go out walking, don't you know, with you . . . into the country, or . . .'
'How can you?'
'Why not?'
'Ah, upon my word, how you do go on!'
'But allow me . . .'
At this point they were overtaken by a dapper little shopman, with a little goat's beard, and with his fingers held apart like antlers, so as to keep his sleeves from slipping over his hands, in a long-skirted bluish coat, and a warm cap that resembled a bloated water-melon. Pyetushkov, for propriety's sake, fell back a little behind Vassilissa, but quickly came up with her again.
'Well, then, what about our walk?'
Vassilissa looked slily at him and giggled again.
'Do you belong to these parts?'
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