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Auntie began to set this down to immorality, and said that people had no fear of God, but she suddenly remembered that Ivan Ivanitch, her brother, and Varvarushka both people of holy life had feared God, but all the same had had children on the sly, and had sent them to the Foundling Asylum.
Her big house with its chandeliers and pictures; her footman Mishenka, with his glossy moustache and swallowtail coat; the devout and dignified Varvarushka, and smooth-tongued Agafyushka; and the young people of both sexes who came almost every day to ask her for money, and with whom she always for some reason felt guilty; and the clerks, the doctors, and the ladies who were charitable at her expense, who flattered her and secretly despised her for her humble origin how wearisome and alien it all was to her!
Varvarushka glanced at the ikons again and crossed herself. "But no one will have me, Spiridonovna," said Anna Akimovna to change the conversation. "What's to be done?" "It's your own fault. You keep waiting for highly educated gentlemen, but you ought to marry one of your own sort, a merchant." "We don't want a merchant," said Auntie, all in a flutter. "Queen of Heaven, preserve us!
They were free-and-easy, perhaps, partly also because Varvarushka, who under the old masters had wielded great power and had kept watch over the morals of the clerks, had now no authority whatever in the house; and perhaps because many of them still remembered the time when Auntie Tatyana Ivanovna, whose brothers kept a strict hand over her, had been dressed like a simple peasant woman like Agafya, and when Anna Akimovna used to run about the yard near the factory buildings and every one used to call her Anyutya.
The old man made no reply but stood still and thought a moment, moving his eyebrows, and then went upstairs to his wife. "Varvarushka, if you want anything out of the shop," he said affectionately, "take it, my dea r. Take it and welcome; don't hesitate." And the next day the deaf man, running across the yard, called to her: "If there is anything you want, mother, take it."
Another game was got up at the other end of the table played by the two Mashas, Varvarushka, and the sewing-maid Marfa Ptrovna, who was waked on purpose to play "kings," and whose face looked cross and sleepy. While they were playing they talked of men, and of how difficult it was to get a good husband nowadays, and which state was to be preferred that of an old maid or a widow.
As she ran up the stairs and, reaching the upper story, sat down to the piano in the drawing-room, a murmur of sound reached her from below like the roar of the sea; most likely they were talking of her and of Pimenov, and perhaps Stinging Beetle was taking advantage of her absence to insult Varvarushka and was putting no check on her language.
Anna Akimovna walked through the rooms followed by her retinue the aunt, Varvarushka, Nikandrovna, the sewing-maid Marfa Petrovna, and the downstairs Masha. Varvarushka a tall, thin, slender woman, taller than any one in the house, dressed all in black, smelling of cypress and coffee crossed herself in each room before the ikon, bowing down from the waist.
She quickly threw off her dress, that she was weary of already, put on a dressing-gown, and ran downstairs; and as she ran downstairs she laughed and thumped with her feet like a school-boy; she had a great desire for mischief. Evening Auntie, in a loose print blouse, Varvarushka and two old women, were sitting in the dining-room having supper.
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