"Well, madam, it really would be nice of you to stay a while. Maybe in your presence he would be ashamed."
"No. Thank you. I haven't the patience to look at him."
"Yes, of course, you are of the gentlefolk.
You can have your own way, and at that I suppose you've got to dance to somebody's music."
"Oh, I should say so."
"Yes, I thought so.
I meant to ask you another thing. Is it nice to be an actress?"
"You earn your own bread and butter. That's one good thing."
"And is it true, as Porfiry Vladimirych was telling me, that strangers embrace actresses about the waist?"
Anninka flushed up an instant.
"Porfiry Vladimirych does not understand," she said with irritation. "That's why he talks nonsense.
He seems to have no notion that it's only play and not reality on the stage."
"And yet, even he, that is, Porfiry Vladimirych, when he saw you first, his mouth began to water.
'My niece,' and 'dear,' and 'darling,' like a gay blade.
And his shameless eyes just devour you."
"Yevpraksia, why do you talk nonsense?"
"I? Oh, I don't care.
You stay here and you'll see.
And I—I don't care.
I'll give up my position, and go back to father.
It's dull here, anyway, you were right about it."
"It is silly for you to suppose that I am going to stay here.
But you're right about one thing, Golovliovo certainly is a dull place.
And the longer you stay here the duller you feel."
Yevpraksia turned pensive, then yawned and said:
"When I stayed with father I was very, very slim.
Now, you see how stout I am, like an oven.
So dullness does one good, after all."
"You won't stand it long, anyway.
Remember what I say—you won't."
With this the conversation ended.
Luckily Porfiry Vladimirych did not hear it, otherwise he would have obtained a new and fruitful theme for his endless sermonizing.
Porfiry Vladimirych tortured Anninka for two whole days.
He kept on saying, "Wait, don't be in a hurry! Quietly, easily. Say your prayers and receive your benediction," and so on.
He tired her to death.
Finally, on the fifth day, he was ready to go to town with her, though he found another way of tormenting his dear niece.
She was in her fur coat waiting for him in the vestibule, and he, as if to spite her, lingered a whole hour, dressing and washing and clapping his thighs and crossing himself, and walking back and forth, and sitting down, and giving orders. "Here—, or see to it—you know what I mean. See that nothing happens—you know."
He behaved as if he were leaving Golovliovo not for a few hours, but forever.
Having tired everybody out, the men and horses who had been waiting at the porch for an hour and a half, his own throat at last got dry from gabbling, and he decided to start out.
The entire affair in town was concluded while the horses were eating their oats at the inn.
Porfiry Vladimirych produced an account book, from which it appeared that when Arina Petrovna died the orphans had twenty thousand rubles or a trifle less in five per cent securities.
Then the petition to remove the guardianship was filed, along with the papers testifying to the majority of the orphans, and the order was immediately issued to remove the guardianship and transfer both capital and land to the rightful owners.
In the evening of the same day Anninka signed all the papers and inventories that Yudushka had prepared and when all was done, heaved a sigh of relief.
The remaining few days Anninka spent in the greatest agitation.
She wanted to leave Golovliovo at once, but her uncle met her attempts with a jest, which, good-natured as it sounded, screened a stupid obstinacy that no human power could overcome.
"You yourself said you were going to stay a week. Then stay," he said.
"I don't understand why you are in such a hurry. You don't have to pay rent, you are welcome without pay.
You will have tea and dinner and anything your heart may desire."
"But, uncle, I must go," Anninka pleaded.
"You are on pins and needles, but I am not going to give you horses," jested Yudushka. "I just won't give you horses, and you'll have to be my prisoner.