“I’m . . .  I’m ill,” Yegorushka brought out.

“Ill?” said Father Christopher in amazement.  “That’s not the right thing, my boy. . . .  One mustn’t be ill on a journey.  Aie, aie, what are you thinking about, boy . . . eh?”

He put his hand to Yegorushka’s head, touched his cheek and said: 

“Yes, your head’s feverish. . . .  You must have caught cold or else have eaten something. . . .  Pray to God.”

“Should we give him quinine? . . .” said Ivan Ivanitch, troubled.

“No; he ought to have something hot. . . .  Yegory, have a little drop of soup?  Eh?”

“I . . . don’t want any,” said Yegorushka.

“Are you feeling chilly?”

“I was chilly before, but now . . . now I am hot.  And I ache all over. . . .”

Ivan Ivanitch went up to the sofa, touched Yegorushka on the head, cleared his throat with a perplexed air, and went back to the table.

“I tell you what, you undress and go to bed,” said Father Christopher.  “What you want is sleep now.”

He helped Yegorushka to undress, gave him a pillow and covered him with a quilt, and over that Ivan Ivanitch’s great-coat.  Then he walked away on tiptoe and sat down to the table.  Yegorushka shut his eyes, and at once it seemed to him that he was not in the hotel room, but on the highroad beside the camp fire.  Emelyan waved his hands, and Dymov with red eyes lay on his stomach and looked mockingly at Yegorushka.

“Beat him, beat him!” shouted Yegorushka.

“He is delirious,” said Father Christopher in an undertone.

“It’s a nuisance!” sighed Ivan Ivanitch.

“He must be rubbed with oil and vinegar.  Please God, he will be better to-morrow.”

To be rid of bad dreams, Yegorushka opened his eyes and began looking towards the fire.  Father Christopher and Ivan Ivanitch had now finished their tea and were talking in a whisper.  The first was smiling with delight, and evidently could not forget that he had made a good bargain over his wool; what delighted him was not so much the actual profit he had made as the thought that on getting home he would gather round him his big family, wink slyly and go off into a chuckle; at first he would deceive them all, and say that he had sold the wool at a price below its value, then he would give his son-in-law, Mihail, a fat pocket-book and say:  “Well, take it! that’s the way to do business!” Kuzmitchov did not seem pleased; his face expressed, as before, a business-like reserve and anxiety.

“If I could have known that Tcherepahin would give such a price,” he said in a low voice, “I wouldn’t have sold Makarov those five tons at home.  It is vexatious!  But who could have told that the price had gone up here?”

A man in a white shirt cleared away the samovar and lighted the little lamp before the ikon in the corner.  Father Christopher whispered something in his ear; the man looked, made a serious face like a conspirator, as though to say, “I understand,” went out, and returned a little while afterwards and put something under the sofa.  Ivan Ivanitch made himself a bed on the floor, yawned several times, said his prayers lazily, and lay down.