The host himself, when he entered, was still clad in a dressing-gown exposing a hairy chest; and as he sat holding his pipe in his hand, and drinking tea from a cup, he would have made a model for the sort of painter who prefers to portray gentlemen of the less curled and scented order.
"What think you ?" he asked of Chichikov after a short silence.

"Are you willing NOW to play me for those souls ?" "I have told you that I never play cards.

If the souls are for sale, I will buy them." "I decline to sell them.

Such would not be the course proper between friends.

But a game of banker would be quite another matter.