They reached Nizhneye Gorodistche.  Near the tavern on the dung-strewn earth, where the snow was still lying, there stood wagons that had brought great bottles of crude sulphuric acid.  There were a great many people in the tavern, all drivers, and there was a smell of vodka, tobacco, and sheepskins.  There was a loud noise of conversation and the banging of the swing-door.  Through the wall, without ceasing for a moment, came the sound of a concertina being played in the shop.  Marya Vassilyevna sat down and drank some tea, while at the next table peasants were drinking vodka and beer, perspiring from the tea they had just swallowed and the stifling fumes of the tavern.

“I say, Kuzma!” voices kept shouting in confusion.  “What there!” “The Lord bless us!” “Ivan Dementyitch, I can tell you that!” “Look out, old man!”

A little pock-marked man with a black beard, who was quite drunk, was suddenly surprised by something and began using bad language.

“What are you swearing at, you there?” Semyon, who was sitting some way off, responded angrily.  “Don’t you see the young lady?”

“The young lady!” someone mimicked in another corner.

“Swinish crow!”

“We meant nothing...” said the little man in confusion.  “I beg your pardon.  We pay with our money and the young lady with hers.  Good-morning!”

“Good-morning,” answered the schoolmistress.

“And we thank you most feelingly.”

Marya Vassilyevna drank her tea with satisfaction, and she, too, began turning red like the peasants, and fell to thinking again about firewood, about the watchman....

“Stay, old man,” she heard from the next table, “it’s the schoolmistress from Vyazovye....  We know her; she’s a good young lady.”

“She’s all right!”

The swing-door was continually banging, some coming in, others going out.  Marya Vassilyevna sat on, thinking all the time of the same things, while the concertina went on playing and playing.  The patches of sunshine had been on the floor, then they passed to the counter, to the wall, and disappeared altogether; so by the sun it was past midday.  The peasants at the next table were getting ready to go.  The little man, somewhat unsteadily, went up to Marya Vassilyevna and held out his hand to her; following his example, the others shook hands, too, at parting, and went out one after another, and the swing-door squeaked and slammed nine times.

“Vassilyevna, get ready,” Semyon called to her.

They set off.  And again they went at a walking pace.

“A little while back they were building a school here in their Nizhneye Gorodistche,” said Semyon, turning round.  “It was a wicked thing that was done!”

“Why, what?”

“They say the president put a thousand in his pocket, and the school guardian another thousand in his, and the teacher five hundred.”

“The whole school only cost a thousand.  It’s wrong to slander people, grandfather.  That’s all nonsense.”