After dinner, when Porfiry Vladimirych retired for his afternoon nap, Anninka remained alone with Yevpraksia and suddenly felt a desire to have a talk with her uncle's housekeeper.
She wanted to know why Yevpraksia did not find it horrible to live at Golovliovo and what gave her the strength to endure the torrents of meaningless words that uncle's mouth belched forth from morning to night.
"Do you find it dull here at Golovliovo, Yevpraksia?"
"Why should we find it dull? We are not of the gentlefolk."
"But still—always alone—no diversion, no pleasures—"
"What pleasures do I need?
When it's dull, I look out of the window.
I didn't have much merriment when I lived with father."
"Still, I suppose, it was better at home.
You had friends, went visiting, played."
"Ah, what's the use!"
"And here with uncle. He says such dull things and he is so long-winded.
Is he always like that?"
"Always, all day long the same way."
"And it doesn't bore you?"
"Why should it?
I don't listen to him."
"But it's impossible not to listen at all.
He may notice it and become offended."
"How can he tell?
I look at him.
He keeps on talking and I keep on looking and at the same time I think my own thoughts."
"What do you generally think about?"
"Different things.
If I have to pickle gherkins, I think about gherkins. If I have to send someone to town, I think about town.
Whatever the household needs, that's what I think about."
"So, I see, you live with uncle, but you are always alone?"
"Yes, as good as alone.
Unless he sometimes wishes to play cards. Well, then we play cards.
But even then he often stops in the middle of the game, puts the cards away and begins to talk.
And I look at him.
It was much livelier when Arina Petrovna was alive.
When she was around he was afraid to talk too much, because the old woman would often cut him short.
But now the liberties he takes are the limit."
"Well, you see, Yevpraksia, that's just the horror of it.
It is frightful when a man talks and does not know what he says, why he talks and whether he'll ever get through.
Doesn't it scare you?"
Yevpraksia looked at her as if struck by a new, wonderful idea.
"You're not the only one," she said. "Many people around here don't like him for the same thing."
"Is that so?"
"Yes.
Even the servants. Not one of them can stay here long. He changes them almost every month.
The clerks, too.
And all on account of that."
"He annoys them?"
"Terribly.
The drunkards—they stay because drunkards don't hear.
You may blow a bugle, but it's as if they had their ears stuffed.
But the trouble is, he doesn't like drunkards."
"Oh, Yevpraksia, and he is trying to persuade me to stay here."