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"Offended, I suppose? I see. . . . You don't like to be told the truth. "But I notice that my presence is unwelcome. No one can eat or talk while I am here. . . . Well, you should have told me, and I would have gone away. . . . I will go." Zhilin gets up and walks with dignity to the door. As he passes the weeping Fedya he stops.
"The soup is very good to-day," the governess ventures timidly. "Oh, you think so?" says Zhilin, looking at her angrily from under his eyelids. "Every one to his taste, of course. It must be confessed our tastes are very different, Varvara Vassilyevna. Yes!" Fedya, a boy of seven with a pale, sickly face, leaves off eating and drops his eyes. His face grows paler still.
Your father works and you must work, too! No one must eat the bread of idleness! You must be a man! A m-man!" "For God's sake, leave off," says his wife in French. "Don't nag at us before outsiders, at least. . . . The old woman is all ears; and now, thanks to her, all the town will hear of it." "I am not afraid of outsiders," answers Zhilin in Russian.
Fedya wails and sobs more loudly than ever. Zhilin turns with dignity to the door and departs to his bedroom. When he wakes from his after-dinner nap he begins to feel the stings of conscience.
When Ivan Petrovitch sees them off at the station, he wipes his tears as the train starts, and shouts: "Good-bye, if you please." And he waves his handkerchief. IT is, as a rule, after losing heavily at cards or after a drinking-bout when an attack of dyspepsia is setting in that Stepan Stepanitch Zhilin wakes up in an exceptionally gloomy frame of mind.
"She's been spoilt. . . . That's how it is, Anfissa Ivanovna; no one likes to hear the truth nowadays. . . . It's all my fault, it seems." Several minutes of silence follow. Zhilin looks round at the plates, and noticing that no one has yet touched their soup, heaves a deep sigh, and stares at the flushed and uneasy face of the governess. "Why don't you eat, Varvara Vassilyevna?" he asks.
"This is insufferable," says his mother, getting up from the table and flinging down her dinner-napkin. "You never let us have dinner in peace! Your bread sticks in my throat." And putting her handkerchief to her eyes, she walks out of the dining-room. "Now she is offended," grumbles Zhilin, with a forced smile.
Going into the dining-room to breakfast, he finds there Fedya, who, at the sight of his father, gets up and looks at him helplessly. "Well, young man?" Zhilin greets him good-humouredly, sitting down to the table. "What have you got to tell me, young man? Are you all right? Well, come, chubby; give your father a kiss."
After swallowing the first spoonful Zhilin suddenly frowns and puts down his spoon. "Damn it all!" he mutters; "I shall have to dine at a restaurant, I suppose." "What's wrong?" asks his wife anxiously. "Isn't the soup good?" "One must have the taste of a pig to eat hogwash like that!
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