Heart of a Dog Read Online Free Page B

old is she?'
        'Fourteen, professor . . . The scandal would ruin me, you see. I'm due to go abroad on official business any day now.'
        'I'm afraid I'm not a lawyer . . . you'd better wait a couple of years and then marry her.'
        'I'm married already, professor.'
        'Oh, lord!'
        The door opened, faces changed, instruments clattered and Philip Philipovich worked on
    unceasingly.
        This place is indecent, thought the dog, but I like it! What the hell can he want me for, though? Is he just going to let me live here? Maybe he's eccentric. After all, he could get a pedigree dog as easy as winking. Perhaps I'm good-looking! What luck. As for that stupid owl . . . cheeky brute.
        The dog finally woke up late in the evening when the bells had stopped ringing and at the very moment when the door admitted some special visitors. There were four of them at once, all young people and all extremely modestly dressed.
        What's all this? thought the dog in astonishment. Philip Philipovich treated these visitors with considerable hostility. He stood at his desk, staring at them like a general confronting the enemy. The nostrils of his hawk-like nose were dilated. The party shuffled awkwardly across the carpet.
        'The reason why we've come to see you, professor . . .' began one of them, who had a six-inch shock of hair sprouting straight out of his head.
        'You ought not to go out in this weather without wearing galoshes, gentlemen,' Philip Philipovich interrupted in a schoolmasterish voice. 'Firstly you'll catch cold and secondly you've muddied my carpets and all my carpets are Persian.'
        The young man with the shock of hair broke off, and all four stared at Philip Philipovich in consternation. The silence lasted several minutes and was only broken by the drumming of Philip Philipovich's fingers on a painted wooden platter on his desk.
        'Firstly, we're not gentlemen,' the youngest of them, with a face like a peach, said finally.
        'Secondly,' Philip Philipovich interrupted him, 'are you a man or a woman?'
        The four were silent again and their mouths dropped open. This time the shock-haired young man pulled himself together.
        'What difference does it make, comrade?' he asked proudly.
        'I'm a woman,' confessed the peach-like youth, who was wearing a leather jerkin, and blushed heavily. For some reason one of the others, a fair young man in a sheepskin hat, also turned bright red.
        'In that case you may leave your cap on, but I must ask you, my dear sir, to remove your headgear,' said Philip Philipovich imposingly.
        'I am not your dear sir,' said the fair youth sharply, pulling off his sheepskin hat.
        'We have come to see you,' the dark shock-headed boy began again.
        'First of all - who are 'we'?'
        'We are the new management committee of this block of flats,' said the dark youth with
    suppressed fury. 'I am Shvonder, her name is Vyazemskaya and these two are comrades Pestrukhin and Sharovkyan. So we . . .'
        'Are you the people who were moved in as extra tenants into Fyodor Pavlovich Sablin's apartment?' 'Yes, we are,' replied Shvonder.
        'God, what is this place coming to!' exclaimed Philip Philipovich in despair and wrung his hands. 'What are you laughing for, professor?' 'What do you mean - laughing? I'm in absolute despair,' shouted Philip Philipovich. 'What's going to become of the central heating now?'
        'Are you making fun of us. Professor Preobrazhensky?' 'Why have you come to see me? Please be as quick as possible. I'm just going in to supper.'
        'We, the house management,' said Shvonder with hatred, 'have come to see you as a result of a general meeting of the tenants of this block, who are charged with the problem of increasing the occupancy of this house . . .' 28

        'What d'you mean - charged?' cried Philip Philipovich. 'Please try and express