Kuriatin has promised to find a buyer for The Mammoth, which has been lying outside on a site that Frank wants to sell. But he has failed to follow through. Kuriatin tells Frank a story supposedly from his old village about a peasant who married a young woman. Frank thinks that this, like many of Kuriatin's stories, is probably something he made up just to make a knowing comment on the fact that Frank has hired a woman to take care of the children. In a conversation with Tvyordov at the press, Frank realizes that Tvyordov is making a comment quite similar to that of Kuriatin about his taking in a woman so soon after his wife has left. Neither of these opinions especially worries Frank, but he is concerned about how the.....
