This worthy shopkeeper, with a grey beard and silver-rimmed spectacles, still owed Stepan Trofimovitch four hundred roubles for some acres of timber he had bought on the latter's little estate (near Skvoreshniki).

Though Varvara Petrovna had liberally provided her friend with funds when she sent him to Berlin, yet Stepan Trofimovitch had, before starting, particularly reckoned on getting that four hundred roubles, probably for his secret expenditure, and was ready to cry when Andreev asked leave to defer payment for a month, which he had a right to do, since he had brought the first installments of the money almost six months in advance to meet Stepan Trofimovitch's special need at the time.
Varvara Petrovna read this first letter greedily, and underlining in pencil the exclamation: "Where are they both ?" numbered it and put it away in a drawer.

He had, of course, referred to his two deceased wives.
The second letter she received from Berlin was in a different strain: "I am working twelve hours out of the twenty-four." ("Eleven would be enough," muttered Varvara Petrovna.) "I'm rummaging in the libraries, collating, copying, rushing about.

I've visited the professors.

I have renewed my acquaintance with the delightful Dundasov family.