"Really! but they told us that it was dear. Only, she limps a little, but that will pass off. They told us that she was very strong."
"What academy are you from?" asked Kozeltzoff, who wished to inquire for his brother.
"We are just from the academy of the nobility; there are six of us, and we are on our way to Sevastopol at our own desire," said the talkative young officer. "But we do not know where our battery is; some say that it is in Sevastopol, others that it is at Odessa."
"Was it not possible to find out at Simferopol?" asked Kozeltzoff.
"They do not know there. Just imagine, one of our comrades went to the headquarters there, and they were impertinent to him. You can imagine how disagreeable that was! Would you like to have me make you a cigarette," he said at that moment to the one-armed officer, who was just pulling out his cigarette-machine.
He waited on the latter with a sort of servile enthusiasm.
"And are you from Sevastopol also?" he went on. "Oh, good Heavens, how wonderful that is! How much we did think of you, and of all our heroes, in Petersburg," he said, turning to Kozeltzoff with respect and good-natured flattery.
"And now, perhaps, you may have to go back?" inquired the lieutenant.
"That is just what we are afraid of. You can imagine that, after having bought the horse, and provided ourselves with all the necessaries,--a coffee-pot with a spirit-lamp, and other indispensable trifles,--we have no money left," he said, in a low voice, as he glanced at his companions; "so that, if we do have to go back, we don't know what is to be done."
"Have you received no money for travelling expenses?" inquired Kozeltzoff.
"No," replied he, in a whisper; "they only promised to give it to us here."
"I know that--the principal thing--is the certificate; but a senator in Moscow,--he's my uncle,--when I was at his house, said that they would give it to us here; otherwise, he would have given me some himself. So they will give it to us here?"
"I too think that they will," he said, in a tone which showed that, after having made the same identical inquiry in thirty posting-stations, and having everywhere received different answers, he no longer believed any one implicitly.