“’Little Lower Street:  Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov, living in a house of her own.’  We must go at once and try to find her.  It’s a nuisance!”

Soon after breakfast Ivan Ivanitch and Yegorushka left the inn.

“It’s a nuisance,” muttered his uncle.  “You are sticking to me like a burr.  You and your mother want education and gentlemanly breeding and I have nothing but worry with you both. . . .”

When they crossed the yard, the waggons and the drivers were not there.  They had all gone off to the quay early in the morning.  In a far-off dark corner of the yard stood the chaise.

“Good-bye, chaise!” thought Yegorushka.

At first they had to go a long way uphill by a broad street, then they had to cross a big marketplace; here Ivan Ivanitch asked a policeman for Little Lower Street.

“I say,” said the policeman, with a grin, “it’s a long way off, out that way towards the town grazing ground.”

They met several cabs but Ivan Ivanitch only permitted himself such a weakness as taking a cab in exceptional cases and on great holidays.  Yegorushka and he walked for a long while through paved streets, then along streets where there were only wooden planks at the sides and no pavements, and in the end got to streets where there were neither planks nor pavements.  When their legs and their tongues had brought them to Little Lower Street they were both red in the face, and taking off their hats, wiped away the perspiration.

“Tell me, please,” said Ivan Ivanitch, addressing an old man sitting on a little bench by a gate, “where is Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov’s house?”

“There is no one called Toskunov here,” said the old man, after pondering a moment.  “Perhaps it’s Timoshenko you want.”

“No, Toskunov. . . .”

“Excuse me, there’s no one called Toskunov. . . .”

Ivan Ivanitch shrugged his shoulders and trudged on farther.

“You needn’t look,” the old man called after them.  “I tell you there isn’t, and there isn’t.”

“Listen, auntie,” said Ivan Ivanitch, addressing an old woman who was sitting at a corner with a tray of pears and sunflower seeds, “where is Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov’s house?”

The old woman looked at him with surprise and laughed.

“Why, Nastasya Petrovna live in her own house now!” she cried.  “Lord! it is eight years since she married her daughter and gave up the house to her son-in-law!  It’s her son-in-law lives there now.”

And her eyes expressed:  “How is it you didn’t know a simple thing like that, you fools?”

“And where does she live now?” Ivan Ivanitch asked.

“Oh, Lord!” cried the old woman, flinging up her hands in surprise.  “She moved ever so long ago!  It’s eight years since she gave up her house to her son-in-law!  Upon my word!”

She probably expected Ivan Ivanitch to be surprised, too, and to exclaim:  “You don’t say so,” but Ivan Ivanitch asked very calmly: