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Updated: June 17, 2025
They began to play a game of "kings," as they had done the year before, and the year before that, and all the servants in both stories crowded in at the doors to watch the game. Anna Akimovna fancied she caught a glimpse once or twice of Mishenka, with a patronizing smile on his face, among the crowd of peasant men and women.
As she said good-bye she slipped three hundred roubles into his hand; he seemed taken aback, and looked at her for a minute in silence with his pewtery eyes, but then seemed to understand and said: "The receipt, honoured Anna Akimovna, you can only receive on the New Year." Lysevitch had become utterly limp and heavy, and he staggered when Mishenka put on his overcoat.
Every one in the house knew that red-haired Masha was in love with Mishenka, the footman, and this genuine, passionate, hopeless love had already lasted three years. "Come, don't talk nonsense," Anna Akimovna consoled her. "I am going on for thirty, but I am still meaning to marry a young man."
Mishenka could not picture his future spouse in his imagination except as a tall, plump, substantial, pious woman, stepping like a peacock, and, for some reason, with a long shawl over her shoulders; while Masha was thin, slender, tightly laced, and walked with little steps, and, worst of all, she was too fascinating and at times extremely attractive to Mishenka, and that, in his opinion, was incongruous with matrimony and only in keeping with loose behaviour.
A poor student! Who knows, if she had been embraced by a rich student or an officer the consequences might have been different. "Why don't you wish it?" Anna Akimovna asked. "What more do you want?" Mishenka was silent and looked at the arm-chair fixedly, and raised his eyebrows. "Do you love some one else?" Silence. The red-haired Masha came in with letters and visiting cards on a tray.
"Anna Akimovna," he said, laying his hand on his heart and raising his eyebrows, "you are my mistress and my benefactress, and no one but you can tell me what I ought to do about marriage, for you are as good as a mother to me. . . . But kindly forbid them to laugh and jeer at me downstairs. They won't let me pass without it." "How do they jeer at you?" "They call me Mashenka's Mishenka."
Mishenka, who was standing at the door of the drawing-room and overheard this, said: "It has not come from us, and it will not end with us. Of course, I am not an educated man, Anna Akimovna, but I do understand that the poor must always respect the rich.
Mishenka, no longer wearing his swallow-tail but in his reefer jacket, came in, and without speaking lighted two candles; then he went out and returned a minute later with a cup of tea on a tray. "What are you laughing at?" she asked, noticing a smile on his face. "I was downstairs and heard the jokes you were making about Pimenov . . ." he said, and put his hand before his laughing mouth.
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