“The old dame bustled about apologetically.

“‘Never mind,’ said I.  ‘Live on, live on.’

“‘Live on,’ said Alexander Fed’otch.

“We went away and didn’t come back to it or ask about it for seventeen years.  Then one day I received a letter offering me twenty pounds (two hundred roubles) for the property, but as I had no need of money I paid no attention.  A month later some one offered me thirty pounds.  Obviously there was something in the air; there was some reason for the sudden lively interest in our property.  Alexander Fed’otch went down, and he discovered that the site was wanted by the Government for a new vodka-shop.  If we didn’t sell, we should at last be forced to give up the property to the Government, and perhaps find ourselves involved in litigation over it.  Alexander Fed’otch made negotiations, and sold it for ninety pounds—­nine hundred roubles—­think of it.  And it only cost us five pounds to start with!  Ah, here is a place where you can get rich if you only have a little capital.”

“The old woman?” I queried.  “Was she evicted?”

“Oh no, she had disappeared—­died, I suppose.”

“You made a handsome profit!”

“Yes, yes.  But that’s quite another history.  You think we made eighty-five pounds profit.  No, no.  We ought to have invested the money quietly, but unfortunately Alexander Fed’otch, when he was selling the house, met another man who persuaded him to buy a plot of land higher up, and to build a grandiose villa upon it.  They thought it a splendid idea, and Alexander Fed’otch paid the nine hundred roubles as part of the money down for the contractor.  It was a great sorrow—­for no profit ever came of it.  It happened in the revolutionary time.  We paid the contractor two thousand roubles, and then suddenly all his workmen went on strike.  He was an honest man, and it was not his fault.  His name was Gretchkin.  He went to Novorossisk to try to get together a new band of men, and there he met with a calamity.  He arrived on the day when the mutinous sailors were hanged, and the sight so upset him that he lost his head—­he plunged into a barracks and began shooting at the officers with his revolver.  He was arrested, tried, and condemned to death.  The sentence, however, was commuted to penal servitude—­that was when we got our Duma and there was the general pardon.  Two thousand roubles were lost to us right away.  The half-dug foundations of our house remained—­a melancholy sight.

“The datcha is finished now; to-morrow you must go and see it.  But it has cost us in all ten thousand roubles.  I should be thankful to sell it for five thousand.  Ai, ai, and we are growing old now and living through everything.”

My hostess went out to fetch another plate of grapes.

“We wanted to put a vineyard round the datcha, but what with the children and the pigs mauling and biting at everything, it couldn’t be managed.  We had, however, a pood of grapes from one of our gardens this year.”