AGRAFENA KONDRATYEVNA.  But what have you seen?  No matter what; but this is your daughter, your own child, you man of stone!

BOLSHOV.  What if she is my daughter?  Thank God she has shoes, dresses, and is well fed—­what more does she want?

AGRAFENA KONDRATYEVNA.  What more!  Look here, Samson Silych, have you gone out of your head?  Well fed!  What if she is well fed!  According to the Christian law we should feed everybody; people look after strangers, to say nothing of their own folks.  Why, it’s a sin to say that, when people can hear you.  Anyhow, she’s your own child!

BOLSHOV.  I know she’s my own child—­but what more does she want?  What are you telling me all these yarns for?  You don’t have to put her in a picture-frame!  I know I’m her father.

AGRAFENA KONDRATYEVNA.  Then, my dear, if you’re her father, then don’t act like a stepfather!  It’s high time, it seems to me, that you came to your senses.  You’ll soon have to part with her, and you don’t grind out one kind word; you ought, for her good, to give her a bit of good advice.  You haven’t a single fatherly way about you!

BOLSHOV.  No, and what a pity; must be God made me that way.

AGRAFENA KONDRATYEVNA.  God made you that way!  What’s the matter with you?  It seems to me God made her, too, didn’t he?  She’s not an animal, Lord forgive me for speaking so!—­but ask her something!

BOLSHOV.  What shall I ask her?  A goose is no playmate for a pig; do what you please.

AGRAFENA KONDRATYEVNA.  We won’t ask you when it comes to the point; meantime, say something.  A man, a total stranger, is coming—­no matter how much you try, a man is not a woman—­he’s coming for his first visit, when we’ve never seen him before.

BOLSHOV.  I said, stop it!

AGRAFENA KONDRATYEVNA.  What a father you are!  And yet you call yourself one!  Ah, my poor abandoned little girl, you’re just like a little orphan with drooping head!  He turns away from you, and won’t recognize you!  Sit down, Lipochka; sit down, little soul, my charming little darling! [She makes her sit down.

LIPOCHKA.  Oh, stop it, mamma!  You’ve mussed me all up!

AGRAFENA KONDRATYEVNA.  All right, then, I’ll look at you from a distance.

LIPOCHKA.  Look if you want to, only don’t rave!  Fudge, mamma, one can’t dress up properly without your going off into a sentimental fit.

AGRAFENA KONDRATYEVNA.  So, so, my dear!  But when I look at you, it seems such a pity.

LIPOCHKA.  Why so?  It had to come some time.

AGRAFENA KONDRATYEVNA.  All the same, it’s a pity, you little fool.  We’ve been raising you all these years, and you’ve grown up—­but now for no reason at all we’re giving you over to strangers, as if we were tired of you, and as if you bored us by your foolish childishness, and by your sweet behavior.  Here, we’ll pack you out of the house, like an enemy from the town; then we’ll come to, and look around, and you’ll be gone forever.  Consider, good people, what it’ll be like, living in some strange, far-away place, choking on another’s bread, and wiping away your tears with your fist!  Yes, good God, she’s marrying beneath her; some blockhead will be butting in—­a blockhead, the son of a blockhead! [She weeps.