Well, now, I can understand how these fools, on the manner of Sonka, play at love.
That’s what they’re fools for.
But you, it seems, have been roasted on all sorts of embers, have been washed in all sorts of lye, and yet you allow yourself foolishness of that sort.
What are you embroidering that shirt for?”
Tamara, without haste, with a pin refastens the fabric more conveniently on her knee, smooths the seam down with the thimble, and speaks, without raising the narrowed eyes, her head bent just a trifle to one side:
“One’s got to be doing something.
It’s wearisome just so.
I don’t play at cards, and I don’t like them.”
Jennie continues to shake her head.
“No, you’re a queer girl, really you are.
You always have more from the guests than all of us get.
You fool, instead of saving money, what do you spend it on?
You buy perfumes at seven roubles the bottle.
Who needs it?
And now you have bought fifteen roubles’ worth of silk.
Isn’t this for your Senka, now?”
“Of course, for Sennechka.”
“What a treasure you’ve found, to be sure!
A miserable thief.
He rides up to this establishment like some general.
How is it he doesn’t beat you yet?
The thieves—they like that.
And he plucks you, have no fear?”
“More than I want to, I won’t give,” meekly answers Tamara and bites the thread in two.
“Now that is just what I wonder at.
With your mind, your beauty, I would put such rings-around-a-rosie about a guest like that, that he’d take me and set me up.
I’d have horses of my own, and diamonds.”
“Everyone to his tastes, Jennechka.
You too, now, are a very pretty and darling girl, and your character is so independent and brave, and yet you and I have gotten stuck in Anna Markovna’s.”
Jennie flares up and answers with unsimulated bitterness:
“Yes!
Why not!
All things come your way! … You have all the very best guests.
You do what you want with them, but with me it’s always either old men or suckling babies.
I have no luck.
The ones are snotty, the others have yellow around the mouth.
More than anything else, now, I dislike the little boys.
He comes, the little varmint; he’s cowardly, he hurries, he trembles, but having done the business, he doesn’t know what to do with his eyes for shame.
He’s all squirming from disgust.
I just feel like giving him one in the snout.
Before giving you the rouble, he holds it in his pocket in his fist, and that rouble’s all hot, even sweaty.
The milksop!
His mother gives him a ten kopeck piece for a French roll with sausage, but he’s economized out of that for a wench.
I had one little cadet in the last few days.
So just on purpose, to spite him, I say: ’Here, my dearie, here’s a little caramel for you on your way; when you’re going back to your corps, you’ll suck on it.’
So at first he got offended, but afterwards took it.
Later I looked from the stoop, on purpose; just as soon as he walked out, he looked around, and right away into his mouth with the caramel.
The little swine!”
“But with old men it’s still worse,” says Little Manka in a tender voice, and slyly looks at Zoe. “What do you think, Zoinka?”
Zoe, who had already finished playing, and was just about to yawn, now cannot in any way give rein to her yawns.