Having waited an hour since his last fare, Iona picks up three young men, who offer him a derisory twenty kopecks to take them to the Police Bridge. The three men are rowdy and argue with one another and one of them, perhaps in a bad temper because the others take the seats while he is forced to stand, repeatedly insults Iona. Iona responds with tame good humor, laughing and agreeing with him and referring to the three of them as merry gentlemen.

Even after repeated insults and one assault (a slap on the neck which Iona hears rather than feels because of the intense cold), Iona responds with a laugh and even tries to converse with the young man and his friends. When one of them asks whether he is married (the only sign of interest any of them show, which comes from one of the seated men, not the standing one who insulted and slapped him), Iona replies:

The only wife for me now is the damp earth.... He-ho-ho!....The grave that is!... Here my son's dead and I am alive.... It's a strange thing, death has come in at the wrong door.... Instead of coming for me it went for my son.

It is a sign of Iona's loneliness and dread of solitude that he will pick up any fare, even when they underpay him and that he will try desperately to talk to anyone, even if his interlocutor is verbally and physically abusive, as the young man is.