'A cup of tea'd be as well first,' observed Tatyana.
'No! tea-drinking indeed! If I want anything I'll go to a tavern or simply a gin-shop.'
Tatyana shook her head.
'Those taverns swarm along our highroads nowadays like fleas in a sheepskin. The villages are all so big—why, Balmasovo . . .'
'Good-bye, till we meet . . . may I leave good luck with you!' Nezhdanov added, correcting himself and entering into his part as a small shopkeeper. But before he had reached the door, Pavel poked his head in from the corridor under his very nose, and handing him a long thin staff, peeled, with a strip of bark running round it like a screw, he said: 'Please take it, Alexey Dmitritch; lean on it as you walk; and the further you hold the stick away from you the better effect it will have.'
Nezhdanov took the staff without speaking and went off; Pavel followed him. Tatyana was about to go away too; Marianna got up and stopped her.
'Wait a little, Tatyana Osipovna; I want you.'
'But I'll be back in a minute with the samovar. Your comrade went off without any tea,
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