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Tchuki-tchuk! 'What is it? I asked puzzled. 'Oh, by my order, they're punishing a scamp of a fellow.... Do you happen to remember Vasya, who waits at the sideboard? 'Which Vasya? 'Why, that waited on us at dinner just now. He with the long whiskers. The fiercest indignation could not have stood against the clear mild gaze of Mardary Apollonitch.
'But you had an estate! 'Oh, we sold that while Vasya was still alive, and the money was all spent. We had to live, and like all our young ladies I did not know how to earn anything. I was particularly useless and helpless. So we spent all we had. I taught the children and improved my own education a little. And then Mitya fell ill when he was already in the fourth form, and God took him.
At Musya and Werner she gazed proudly and respectfully, and she assumed a serious and concentrated expression, and then tried to transfer her smile to Sergey Golovin. "The dear boy is looking at the sky. Look, look, my darling!" she thought about Golovin. "And Vasya! What is it? My God, my God! What am I to do with him? If I should speak to him I might make it still worse.
All trifles, but, mind you, he'd pick up some ten roubles a month over such trifles. Well, as time went on, the old lady lost the use of her legs and took to her bed. In consequence of which event the house was left without a woman to look after it, and that's for all the world like a man without an eye. The old lady bestirred herself and made up her mind to marry Vasya.
"I'll put down a stake for you, Vasya!" says Sonya. "Sit down." He sits down and lays two cards before him. Anya begins counting the numbers. "I've dropped a kopeck!" Grisha announces suddenly, in an agitated voice. "Wait!" He takes the lamp, and creeps under the table to look for the kopeck.
"What generous impulses he has, and how simply, how delicately he put an end to all the misunderstanding with his sister simply by holding out his hand at the right minute and looking at her like that.... And what fine eyes he has, and how fine his whole face is!... He is even better looking than Dounia.... But, good heavens, what a suit how terribly he's dressed!... Vasya, the messenger boy in Afanasy Ivanitch's shop, is better dressed!
They called in a matchmaker at once, the women got to talking of one thing and another, and Vasya went off to have a look at the girls. He picked out Mashenka, a widow's daughter. They made up their minds without loss of time and in a week it was all settled.
Do you be an obedient wife to him, and pray to God for me, that He in His mercy may forgive my transgression. It came to me like an inspiration from an angel of Heaven; I gave her solemn counsel and spoke with such feeling that my own tears flowed too. And so two days later Vasya comes to me: 'Matyusha, says he, 'I forgive you and my wife; God have mercy on you!
The next day Vasya fell ill with something like cholera, and in the evening I heard that he was dead. Well, so they buried him, and Mashenka did not go to the funeral; she didn't care to show her shameless face and her bruises. And soon there began to be talk all over the district that Vasya had not died a natural death, that Mashenka had made away with him.
"In that case, you give me change," he urges Grisha, coming back from the kitchen. "I'll pay you for the change. Won't you? Come, give me ten kopecks for a rouble." Grisha looks suspiciously at Vasya, wondering whether it isn't some trick, a swindle. "I won't," he says, holding his pockets. Vasya begins to get cross, and abuses them, calling them idiots and blockheads.
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