The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories eBook           AT five
o’clock one Sunday afternoon in summer, Volodya, a plain, shy,
sickly-looking lad of seventeen, was sitting in the arbour of
the Shumihins’ country villa, feeling dreary.  His despondent
thought flowed in three directions.  In the first place, he had
next day, Monday, an examination in mathematics; he knew that if
he did not get through the written examination on the morrow, he
would be expelled, for he had already been two years in the
sixth form and had two and three-quarter marks for algebra in
his annual report.  In the second place, his presence at the
villa of the Shumihins, a wealthy family with aristocratic
pretensions, was a continual source of mortification to his
amour-propre.  It seemed to him that Madame Shumihin looked upon
him and his maman as poor relations and dependents, that they
laughed at his maman and did not respect her.  He had on one
occasion accidently overheard Madame Shumihin, in the verandah,
telling her cousin Anna F