“Are there any papers from the office?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch, taking the telegram and seating himself at the looking-glass.

“On the table,” replied Matvey, glancing with inquiring sympathy at his master; and, after a short pause, he added with a sly smile, “They’ve sent from the carriage-jobbers.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch made no reply, he merely glanced at Matvey in the looking-glass.  In the glance, in which their eyes met in the looking-glass, it was clear that they understood one another.  Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes asked:  “Why do you tell me that? don’t you know?”

Matvey put his hands in his jacket pockets, thrust out one leg, and gazed silently, good-humoredly, with a faint smile, at his master.

“I told them to come on Sunday, and till then not to trouble you or themselves for nothing,” he said.  He had obviously prepared the sentence beforehand.

Stepan Arkadyevitch saw Matvey wanted to make a joke and attract attention to himself.  Tearing open the telegram, he read it through, guessing at the words, misspelt as they always are in telegrams, and his face brightened.

“Matvey, my sister Anna Arkadyevna will be here tomorrow,” he said, checking for a minute the sleek, plump hand of the barber, cutting a pink path through his long, curly whiskers.

“Thank God!” said Matvey, showing by this response that he, like his master, realized the significance of this arrival—­that is, that Anna Arkadyevna, the sister he was so fond of, might bring about a reconciliation between husband and wife.

“Alone, or with her husband?” inquired Matvey.

Stepan Arkadyevitch could not answer, as the barber was at work on his upper lip, and he raised one finger.  Matvey nodded at the looking-glass.

“Alone.  Is the room to be got ready upstairs?”

“Inform Darya Alexandrovna:  where she orders.”

“Darya Alexandrovna?” Matvey repeated, as though in doubt.

“Yes, inform her.  Here, take the telegram; give it to her, and then do what she tells you.”

“You want to try it on,” Matvey understood, but he only said, “Yes sir.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch was already washed and combed and ready to be dressed, when Matvey, stepping deliberately in his creaky boots, came back into the room with the telegram in his hand.  The barber had gone.

“Darya Alexandrovna told me to inform you that she is going away.  Let him do—­that is you—­do as he likes,” he said, laughing only with his eyes, and putting his hands in his pockets, he watched his master with his head on one side.  Stepan Arkadyevitch was silent a minute.  Then a good-humored and rather pitiful smile showed itself on his handsome face.

“Eh, Matvey?” he said, shaking his head.

“It’s all right, sir; she will come round,” said Matvey.

“Come round?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you think so?  Who’s there?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch, hearing the rustle of a woman’s dress at the door.