“What next; the bridge is a government business.”

“We don’t want it.”

“Your opinion is not asked.  What is it to you?”

“‘Your opinion is not asked,’” Volodka mimicked him.  “We don’t want to drive anywhere; what do we want with a bridge?  If we have to, we can cross by the boat.”

Someone from the yard outside knocked at the window so violently that it seemed to shake the whole hut.

“Is Volodka at home?” he heard the voice of the younger Lytchkov.  “Volodka, come out, come along.”

Volodka jumped down off the stove and began looking for his cap.

“Don’t go, Volodka,” said Rodion diffidently.  “Don’t go with them, son.  You are foolish, like a little child; they will teach you no good; don’t go!”

“Don’t go, son,” said Stepanida, and she blinked as though about to shed tears.  “I bet they are calling you to the tavern.”

“‘To the tavern,’” Volodka mimicked.

“You’ll come back drunk again, you currish Herod,” said Lukerya, looking at him angrily.  “Go along, go along, and may you burn up with vodka, you tailless Satan!”

“You hold your tongue,” shouted Volodka.

“They’ve married me to a fool, they’ve ruined me, a luckless orphan, you red-headed drunkard...” wailed Lukerya, wiping her face with a hand covered with dough.  “I wish I had never set eyes on you.”

Volodka gave her a blow on the ear and went off.

III

Elena Ivanovna and her little daughter visited the village on foot.  They were out for a walk.  It was a Sunday, and the peasant women and girls were walking up and down the street in their brightly-coloured dresses.  Rodion and Stepanida, sitting side by side at their door, bowed and smiled to Elena Ivanovna and her little daughter as to acquaintances.  From the windows more than a dozen children stared at them; their faces expressed amazement and curiosity, and they could be heard whispering: 

“The Kutcherov lady has come!  The Kutcherov lady!”

“Good-morning,” said Elena Ivanovna, and she stopped; she paused, and then asked:  “Well, how are you getting on?”

“We get along all right, thank God,” answered Rodion, speaking rapidly.  “To be sure we get along.”

“The life we lead!” smiled Stepanida.  “You can see our poverty yourself, dear lady!  The family is fourteen souls in all, and only two bread-winners.  We are supposed to be blacksmiths, but when they bring us a horse to shoe we have no coal, nothing to buy it with.  We are worried to death, lady,” she went on, and laughed.  “Oh, oh, we are worried to death.”

Elena Ivanovna sat down at the entrance and, putting her arm round her little girl, pondered something, and judging from the little girl’s expression, melancholy thoughts were straying through her mind, too; as she brooded she played with the sumptuous lace on the parasol she had taken out of her mother’s hands.