LIPOCHKA.  Well, tear it, and much good may it do you!  You’ll simply have to sew it up again, and that’s all there is to it! [She sits down] Phew! phew! my, I’m soaked through! as if I’d been pulling a van!  Ouf!  Mamma, give me a handkerchief to wipe off the perspiration.

AGRAFENA KONDRATYEVNA.  Wait, I’ll wipe it off myself.  You’ve half killed yourself!  And it’s just as if somebody were making you do it.  Since you don’t respect your mother, you might at least respect these walls.  Your father, my dear, has to make a great effort even to move his legs; but you skip about here like a jumping-jack!

LIPOCHKA.  Go away with your advice!  How can I act according to your notions?  Do you want me to get sick?  That would be all right if I were a doctor’s wife.  Ouf!  What disgusting ideas you have!  Bah!  What a woman you are, mamma, drat it!  Honestly, I sometimes blush for your stupidity!

AGRAFENA KONDRATYEVNA.  What a darling child you are!  Just consider how you’re insulting your mother!  Ah, you stupid chatterbox!  Is it right to dishonor your parents with such words?  Was it for this I brought you into the world, taught you, and guarded you as carefully as if you were a butterfly?

LIPOCHKA.  You didn’t teach me—­strangers did; that’ll do, if you please.  You yourself, to tell the truth, had no bringing up.  What of it?  You bore a child—­what was I then?—­a child without understanding, I didn’t understand the ways of society.  But I grew up, I looked upon society manners, and I saw that I was far more educated than others.  Why should I show too much indulgence for your foolishness?  Why, indeed!  Much reason for it, I must say!

AGRAFENA KONDRATYEVNA.  Let up, let up, you shameless girl!  You’ll drive me out of patience; I’ll go straight to your father, throw myself at his feet, and say:  “Samson, dear, there’s no living because of our daughter!”

LIPOCHKA.  Yes, there’s no living for you!  I imagine so.  But do you give me any chance to live?  Why did you send away my suitor?  Could there have been a better match?  Wasn’t he a Coopid[1]?  What did you find in him that was soft?

[Footnote 1:  An attempt to reproduce Lipochka’s illiterate pronunciation of the Russian word.]

AGRAFENA KONDRATYEVNA.  He was soft enough; just a grinning booby.  He came swaggering around, swaggered, strutted, strutted.  What a rare bird!

LIPOCHKA.  Yes, much you know!  Of course he’s a born gentleman; he behaves in a delicate way.  They always do like that in his circle—­But how do you dare to censure such people, of whom you haven’t any idea?  He, I tell you, is no cheap merchant. [She whispers aside] My darling, my beauty!

AGRAFENA KONDRATYEVNA.  Yes, a good darling!  Do tell!  Pity we didn’t marry you to some circus clown.  Shame on you; there’s some kind of folly in you; you whisper right under your mother’s nose, just to spite her.