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The girl understood that he would not listen to her and would not care to comprehend how degrading his words were for her. Her romantic dreams of a husband-friend, an educated man, who would read with her wise books and help her to find herself in her confused desires, these dreams were stifled by her father's inflexible resolution to marry her to Smolin.
He had changed but slightly he was the same red-headed, closely-cropped, freckled youth; only his moustache had become long, and his eyes seemed to have grown larger. "Now he's changed, eh?" exclaimed Mayakin to his daughter, pointing at the bridegroom. And Smolin shook hands with her, and smiling, said in a ringing baritone voice: "I venture to hope that you have not forgotten your old friend?"
And now, let's eat something, after the Russian fashion." "How are you passing the time, Lubov Yakovlevna?" asked Smolin, arming himself with knife and fork. "She is rather lonesome here with me," replied Mayakin for his daughter. "My housekeeper, all the household is on her shoulders, so she has no time to amuse herself." "And no place, I must add," said Lubov.
When the teacher, a bald-headed man, whose lower lip hung down, called out: "Smolin, African!" the red-headed boy arose slowly, walked up to the teacher, calmly stared into his face, and, having listened to the problem, carefully began to make big round figures on the blackboard with chalk. "Good enough!" said the teacher. "Yozhov, Nicolai. Proceed!"
"I don't know," said Foma, irresolutely. "Come up to Smolin's and the three of us together will chase the pigeons." "Very well. If they let me." "Why, does not your father like you?" "He does like me." "Well, then, he'll let you go. Only don't tell him that I am coming. Perhaps he would not let you go with me. Tell him you want to go to Smolin's. Smolin!"
"I like our dear old town!" said Smolin, looking at the girl with a kindly smile, "it is so beautiful, so vigorous; there is cheerfulness about it that inspires one to work. Its very picturesqueness is somewhat stimulating. In it one feels like leading a dashing life. One feels like working much and seriously. And then, it is an intelligent town.
The image of her brother as she had pictured it to herself prevented her from seeing both her father and Smolin, and she had already made up her mind not to consent to marry before meeting Taras, when suddenly her father shouted to her: "Eh, Lubovka! Why are you thoughtful? What are you thinking of mostly?" "So, everything goes so swiftly," replied Luba, with a smile. "What goes swiftly?"
Like the devil, he is immortal, although he must be upwards of a hundred and fifty years old already. He marries his daughter to Smolin. You remember that red-headed fellow. They say that he is a decent man, but nowadays they even call clever scoundrels decent men, because there are no men.
He died after a short but very painful agony. Yozhov was for some reason or other banished from the town soon after the occurrence on the steamer. A great commercial house sprang up in the town under the firm-name of "Taras Mayakin & African Smolin." Nothing had been heard of Foma during these three years.
Watching the conduct of the boys, so unlike each other, Foma was thus taken unawares by the question and he kept quiet. "Don't you know? How? Explain it to him, Smolin."
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