“You know nothing about him.
On the contrary, he’s a very kind man.”
“No, no, he’s wicked. I heard,” she said with conviction.
“Why, what did you hear?”
“He won’t forgive his daughter...”
“But he loves her.
She has behaved badly to him; and he is anxious and worried about her.”
“Why doesn’t he forgive her?
If he does forgive her now she shouldn’t go back to him.”
“How so?
Why not?”
“Because he doesn’t deserve that she should love him,” she answered hotly.
“Let her leave him for ever and let her go begging, and let him see his daughter begging, and be miserable.”
Her eyes flashed and her cheeks glowed.
“There must be something behind her words,” I thought.
“Was it to his home you meant to send me?” she added after a pause.
“Yes, Elena.”
“No. I’d better get a place as a servant.”
“Ah, how wrong is all that you’re saying, Lenotchka!
And what nonsense! Who would take you as a servant?”
“Any peasant,” she answered impatiently, looking more and more downcast.
She was evidently hottempered.
“A peasant doesn’t want a girl like you to work for him,” I said, laughing.
“Well, a gentleman’s family, then.”
“You live in a gentleman’s family, with your temper?”
“Yes.”
The more irritated she became, the more abrupt were her answers
“But you’d never stand it.”
“Yes I would.
They’d scold me, but I’d say nothing on purpose.
They’d beat me, but I wouldn’t speak, I wouldn’t speak. Let them beat me – I wouldn’t cry for anything.
That would annoy them even more if I didn’t cry.”
“Really, Elena!
What bitterness, and how proud you are!
You must have seen a lot of trouble. . . .”
I got up and went to my big table.
Elena remained on the sofa, looking dreamily at the floor and picking at the edge of the sofa.
She did not speak.
I wondered whether she were angry at what I had said.
Standing by the table I mechanically opened the books I had brought the day before, for the compilation, and by degrees I became absorbed in them.
It often happens to me that I go and open a book to look up something, and go on reading so that I forget everything.
“What are you always writing?” Elena asked with a timid smile, coming quietly to the table.
“All sorts of things, Lenotchka.
They give me money for it.”
“Petitions?”
“No, not petitions.”
And I explained to her as far as I could that I wrote all sorts of stories about different people, and that out of them were made books that are called novels.
She listened with great curiosity.
“Is it all true – what you write?”
“No, I make it up.”