"No more pranks," he said, "enough.
Sleep, friends, and rest."
Meanwhile—where had he hidden the bottle?
Here, the darling!
"Let me see you.
Lord, save Thy creatures," he hummed, taking out a bottle from a bag fastened to the side of the vehicle and applying it to his mouth. "Ah, that's better. It warms your insides, you know.
Shall I have some more?
Well, no. The station is about twenty versts from here. I'll have time to get as drunk as a lord. But shan't I have just one drop more?
The deuce take it, the vodka.
The bottle simply acts like a charm.
It's wicked to drink, but how can you help it, if it is the only way of getting some sleep?
I wish the vodka, the deuce take it, would do for me quick."
He gulped down some more vodka, returned the bottle to its place, and began to fill his pipe.
"We are all right," he said, talking to himself. "First, we had a sip, and here we are smoking.
She won't let me have any tobacco, the old hag, sure as fate she won't, the man is right.
Will she give me food?
She may send me what is left over from her meals.
Well, we, too, had money, but now we have none.
Such is life. To-day you eat and drink your fill, you enjoy yourself and smoke a pipe, "'And to-morrow—where art thou, man?'
Still it would not be a bad thing to have a bite now.
I drink like a fish and I hardly ever have a square meal.
Doctors say drinking does you good only when followed by a hearty meal, as the Most Reverend Smaragd said when we passed through Oboyan.
Was it Oboyan?
The deuce knows, it may have been Kromy.
But that's immaterial now. The main question is, how to get something to eat.
I recollect that my man put a sausage and three rolls into the bag.
Caviar is too expensive for the rascal.
Look at the fellow—sleeps like a log and sings through his nose.
I wouldn't be surprised if he were sitting on the bag."
He rummaged about in search of the bag, but could not find it.
"Ivan Mikhailych, Ivan Mikhailych," he shouted to the sleeping innkeeper.
The man woke up and for a while could not make out where he was and how he happened to be sitting opposite his master.
"I was just beginning to nap," he said finally.
"Sleep, friend, sleep.
I only want to know where the bag with the food is."
"Are you hungry? But you would like a drink first, I suppose."
"Right. Where is the bottle?"
Stepan Vladimirych took a drink, and then attacked the sausage, which happened to be as salty as salt itself and as hard as stone, so that he had to use the point of his knife to pierce it.
"Some whitefish would taste good now," he remarked.
"Excuse me, sir, I clean forgot about the whitefish.
All morning I kept saying to my wife: 'Be sure to remind me of the whitefish.' I am very sorry."
"Oh, it doesn't matter. The sausage is good enough for me.
When we were on the campaign, we ate worse things.
Father used to tell that two Englishmen made a bet. One of them was to eat a dead cat, and he ate it."
"You don't say!"
"He did.
And he was as sick as a dog afterwards.
He cured himself with rum.
He guzzled two bottles as fast as he could, and that set him right at once.
Another Englishman made a bet that he would live a whole year on nothing but sugar."