“Tierce major . . .” mutters Lyashkevsky, “from the queen. . . .  Five and fifteen. . . .  The rascals are talking of politics. . . .  Do you hear?  They have begun about England.  I have six hearts.”

“I have the seven spades.  My point.”

“Yes, it’s yours.  Do you hear?  They are abusing Beaconsfield.  They don’t know, the swine, that Beaconsfield has been dead for ever so long.  So I have twenty-nine. . . .  Your lead.”

“Eight . . . nine . . . ten . . . .  Yes, amazing people, these Russians!  Eleven . . . twelve. . . .  The Russian inertia is unique on the terrestrial globe.”

“Thirty . . .  Thirty-one. . . .  One ought to take a good whip, you know.  Go out and give them Beaconsfield.  I say, how their tongues are wagging!  It’s easier to babble than to work.  I suppose you threw away the queen of clubs and I didn’t realise it.”

“Thirteen . . .  Fourteen. . . .  It’s unbearably hot!  One must be made of iron to sit in such heat on a seat in the full sun!  Fifteen.”

The first game is followed by a second, the second by a third. . . .  Finks loses, and by degrees works himself up into a gambling fever and forgets all about the cracking walls of the high school cellar.  As Lyashkevsky plays he keeps looking at the aborigines.  He sees them, entertaining each other with conversation, go to the open gate, cross the filthy yard and sit down on a scanty patch of shade under an aspen tree.  Between twelve and one o’clock the fat cook with brown legs spreads before them something like a baby’s sheet with brown stains upon it, and gives them their dinner.  They eat with wooden spoons, keep brushing away the flies, and go on talking.

“The devil, it is beyond everything,” cries Lyashkevsky, revolted.  “I am very glad I have not a gun or a revolver or I should have a shot at those cattle.  I have four knaves—­fourteen. . . .  Your point. . . .  It really gives me a twitching in my legs.  I can’t see those ruffians without being upset.”

“Don’t excite yourself, it is bad for you.”

“But upon my word, it is enough to try the patience of a stone!”

When he has finished dinner the native in blue trousers, worn out and exhausted, staggering with laziness and repletion, crosses the street to his own house and sinks feebly on to his bench.  He is struggling with drowsiness and the gnats, and is looking about him as dejectedly as though he were every minute expecting his end.  His helpless air drives Lyashkevsky out of all patience.  The Pole pokes his head out of the window and shouts at him, spluttering: 

“Been gorging?  Ah, the old woman!  The sweet darling.  He has been stuffing himself, and now he doesn’t know what to do with his tummy!  Get out of my sight, you confounded fellow!  Plague take you!”

The native looks sourly at him, and merely twiddles his fingers instead of answering.  A school-boy of his acquaintance passes by him with his satchel on his back.  Stopping him the native ponders a long time what to say to him, and asks: