The girls at once recognized some of the students and ran to meet them.

“Tamarochka, your husband has come—­Volodenka.  And my husband too!—­Mishka!” cried Niura piercingly, hanging herself on the neck of the lanky, big-nosed, solemn Petrovsky.  “Hello, Mishenka.  Why haven’t you come for so long?  I grew weary of waiting for you.”

Yarchenko with a feeling of awkwardness was looking about him on all sides.

“We’d like to have in some way ... don’t you know ... a little private room,” he said with delicacy to Emma Edwardovna who had approached.  “And give us some sort of red wine, please ...  And then, some coffee as well ...  You know yourself.”

Yarchenko always instilled confidence in servants and maitres d’hotel, with his dashing clothes and polite but seigniorial ways.  Emma Edwardovna started nodding her head willingly, just like an old, fat circus horse.

“It can be done ... it can be done ...  Pass this way, gentlemen, into the parlor.  It can be done, it can be done ...  What liqueur?  We have only Benedictine ...  Benedictine, then?  It can be done, it can be done ...  And will you allow the young ladies to come in?”

“Well, if that is so indispensable?” Yarchenko spread out his hands with a sigh.

And at once the girls one after the other straggled into the parlor with its gray plush furniture and blue lantern.  They entered, extended to every one in turn their unbending palms, unused to hand-clasps, gave their names abruptly in a low voice—­ Manya, Katie, Liuba ...  They sat down on somebody’s knees, embraced him around the neck, and, as usual, began to importune: 

“Little student, you’re such a little good-looker.  May I ask for oranzes?”

“Volodenka, buy me some candy!  All right?”

“And me chocolate!”

“Fatty,” Vera, dressed as a jockey, wheedled the sub-professor, clambering up on his knees, “I have a friend, only she’s sick and can’t come out into the drawing room.  I’ll carry her some apples and chocolate.  Will you let me?”

“Well, now, those are all just stories about a friend!  But above all, don’t be thrusting your tenderness at me.  Sit as smart children sit, right here alongside, on the arm chair, just so.  And fold your little hands.”

“Ah, but what if I can’t!” writhed Vera in coquetry, rolling her eyes up under her upper lids ...  “When you are so nice.”

But Lichonin, in answer to this professional beggary, only nodded his head gravely and good-naturedly, just like Emma Edwardovna, and repeated over and over again, mimicking her German accent: 

“Itt can pe done, itt can pe done, itt can pe done...”

“Then I will tell the waiter, honey, to carry my friend some sweets and apples?” pestered Vera.

Such importunity entered the round of their tacit duties.  There even existed among the girls some captious, childish, strange rivalry as to the ability to “ease a guest of his money”—­strange enough because they did not derive any profit out of this, unless, indeed, a certain affection from the housekeeper or a word of approbation from the proprietress.  But in their petty, monotonous, habitually frivolous life there was, in general, a great deal of semi-puerile, semi-hysterical play.