“Good-bye, Leonti,” he said, “it’s time I was going home.”
“Think of the books. It’s leaving the goat loose in the vegetable garden.”
“I might wheel him in the armchair into that dark little room, and lock him in,” thought Leonti, “but if he woke, he might pull the roof down.”
Mark helped him out of his dilemma by jumping to his feet.
“I am going with you,” he said to Raisky. “It is time for you to go to bed, philosopher,” he said to Leonti. “Don’t sit up at nights. You have already got a yellow patch in your face, and your eyes are hollow.”
He put out the light, stuffed on his cap, and leapt out of the window. Raisky followed his example, and they went down the garden once more, climbed the fence, and came out in the street.
“Listen,” said Mark. “I am hungry, and Leonti has nothing to give me. Can you help me to storm an inn?”
“As far as I am concerned. But the thing can be managed without the application of force.”
“It is late, and the inns are shut. No one will open willingly, especially when it is known that I am in the case; consequently we must enter by storm. We will call ‘Fire!’ and then they will open at once, and we can get in.”
“And be hurled out into the street again.”
“There you are wrong. It is possible that I might be refused entrance, but once in, I remain.”
“Ah, you are afraid of the police,” laughed Mark. “You are thinking of what the Governor would decide on in such a serious case, what Niel Andreevich would say, how the company would take it. Now good-bye, I will go and storm my entrance alone.”
“Wait, I have another, more delightful plan,” said Raisky. “My Aunt cannot, you say, bear to hear your name; only the other day she declared she would in no circumstances give you hospitality.”
“Come home with me to supper, and stay the night with me.”
They walked in silence, almost feeling their way through the darkness. When they came to the fence of the Malinovka estate, which bounded the vegetable garden, Raisky proposed to climb it.
“It would be better,” said Mark, “to go by way of the orchard or from the precipice. Here we shall wake the house and must make a circuit in addition. I always go the other way.”
“You--come--here--into the garden? What to do?”
“You have my permission, so long as Tatiana Markovna does not catch you.”