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"I have made up my mind to go to the Marshal," the mother said to me, forgetting she had told me this already. "I mean to make a complaint. Yegor Semyonitch lays his hands on everything we make, and offers it up for the sake of his soul. My Manetchka is left without a trousseau." Manetchka flushed again, but this time she said nothing. "We have to make them all over again.
After supper the little lady showed the vestment which Yegor Semyonitch was embroidering with his own hands as an offering for the Church. Manetchka threw off her shyness for a moment and showed me the tobacco-pouch she was embroidering for her father. When I pretended to be greatly struck by her work, she flushed crimson and whispered something in her mother's ear.
I am thinking of going to the Marshal of Nobility to lodge a complaint. Would you believe it, he has more than once broken open the trunks and . . . taken Manetchka's trousseau and given it to beggars. He has taken everything out of two of the trunks! If he goes on like this, my Manetchka will be left without a trousseau at all." "What are you saying, mamam?" said Manetchka, embarrassed.
When it's finished I shall take it to the priest's to be put away, or else Yegor Semyonitch would carry it off. I store everything at the priest's now," she added in a whisper. And looking at the portrait of her daughter which stood before her on the table, she sighed and said: "We are all alone in the world." And where was the daughter? Where was Manetchka? I did not ask.
And God knows we are not so well off. We are all alone in the world now." "We are alone in the world," repeated Manetchka. A year ago fate brought me once more to the little house. Walking into the drawing-room, I saw the old lady. Dressed all in black with heavy crape pleureuses, she was sitting on the sofa sewing.
I did not dare to ask the old mother dressed in her new deep mourning. And while I was in the room, and when I got up to go, no Manetchka came out to greet me. I did not hear her voice, nor her soft, timid footstep. . . . I understood, and my heart was heavy. "I'VE asked you not to tidy my table," said Nikolay Yevgrafitch. "There's no finding anything when you've tidied up. Where's the telegram?
"Our visitor might suppose . . . there's no knowing what he might suppose . . . . I shall never never marry." Manetchka cast her eyes up to the ceiling with a look of hope and aspiration, evidently not for a moment believing what she said. A little bald-headed masculine figure in a brown coat and goloshes instead of boots darted like a mouse across the passage and disappeared.
Her long nose, which was slightly pitted with smallpox, turned red first, and then the flush passed up to her eyes and her forehead. "My daughter," chanted the little lady, "and, Manetchka, this is a young gentleman who has come," etc. I was introduced, and expressed my surprise at the number of paper patterns. Mother and daughter dropped their eyes.
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