Meanwhile the luckless Mumu had gone on barking, while Gerasim
tried in vain to call her away, from the fence. "There . . . there . . .
again," groaned the old lady, and once more she turned up the whites of
her eyes. The doctor whispered to a maid, she rushed into the outer
hall, and shook Stepan, he ran to wake Gavrila, Gavrila in a fury
ordered the whole household to get up.
Gerasim turned round, saw lights and shadows moving in the windows, and
with an instinct of coming trouble in his heart, put Mumu under his arm,
ran into his garret, and locked himself in. A few minutes later five men
were banging at his door, but feeling the resistance of the bolt, they
stopped. Gavrila ran up in a fearful state of mind, and ordered them all
to wait there and watch till morning. Then he flew off himself to the
maids' quarter, and through an old companion, Liubov Liubimovna, with
whose assistance he used to steal tea, sugar, and other groceries and to
falsify the accounts, sent word to the mistress that the dog had
unhappily run back from somewhere, but that to-morrow she should be
killed, and would the mistress be so gracious as not to be angry and to
overlook it. The old lady would probably not have been so soon appeased,
but the doctor had in his haste given her fully forty drops instead of
twelve.
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