“The local chieftain!” said Boris Sobashnikov, curling his lips downward, but said it so low that Platanov, if he chose to, could pretend that he had not heard anything distinctly.  This reporter had for long aroused in Boris some blind and prickling irritation.  That he was not one of his own herd really meant nothing.  But Boris, like many students (and also officers, junkers, and high-school boys) had grown accustomed to the fact that the outside “civilian” people, who accidentally fell into a company of students on a spree, should hold themselves somewhat subordinately and with servility in it, flatter the studying youths, be struck with its daring, laugh at its jokes, admire its self-admiration, recall their own student years with a sigh of suppressed envy.  But in Platonov there not only was none of this customary wagging of the tail before youth, but, on the contrary, there was to be felt a certain abstracted, calm and polite indifference.

Besides that, Sobashnikov was angered—­and angered with a petty, jealous vexation—­by that simple and yet anticipatory attention which was shown to the reporter by everybody in the establishment, beginning with the porter and ending with the fleshy, taciturn Katie.  This attention was shown in the way he was listened to, in that triumphal carefulness with which Tamara filled his glass, and in the way Little White Manka pared a pear for him solicitously, and in the delight of Zoe, who had caught the case skillfully thrown to her across the table by the reporter, when she had vainly asked for a cigarette from her two neighbors, who were lost in conversation; and in the way none of the girls begged either chocolate or fruits from him, in the lively gratitude for his little services and his treating.  “Pimp!” Sobashkinov had almost decided mentally with malice, but did not believe it even himself —­the reporter was altogether too homely and too carelessly dressed, and moreover he bore himself with great dignity.

Platonov again made believe that he had not heard the insolent remark made by the student.  He only nervously crumpled a napkin in his fingers and lightly threw it aside from him.  And again his eyelids quivered in the direction of Boris Sobashnikov.

“Yes, true, I am one of the family here,” he continued calmly, moving his glass in slow circles on the table.  “Just think, I dined in this very house, day after day, for exactly four months.”

“No?  Seriously?” Yarchenko wondered and laughed.

“In all seriousness.  The table here isn’t at all bad, by the way.  The food is filling and savory, although exceedingly greasy.”

“But how did you ever...”

“Why, just because I was tutoring for high school a daughter of Anna Markovna, the lady of this hospitable house.  Well, I stipulated that part of my monthly pay should be deducted for my dinners.”

“What a strange fancy!” said Yarchenko.  “And did you do this of your own will?  Or ...  Pardon me, I am afraid of seeming indiscreet to you ...  Perhaps at that time ... extreme necessity? ...”