Short Stories
ng lady; you are a wife and mother! You turn away? Aha! It's not
agreeable to listen to the bitter truth!
"It's strange that you only speak the bitter truth when your
liver is out of order."
"That's right; get up a scene."
"Have you been out late? Or playing cards?"
"What if I have? Is that anybody's business? Am I obliged to
give an account of my doings to any one? It's my own money I
lose, I suppose? What I spend as well as what is spent in this
house belongs to me—me. Do you hear? To me!"
And so on, all in the same style. But at no other time is Ste-
pan Stepanitch so reasonable, virtuous, stern or just as at dinner,
when all his household are sitting about him. It usually begins
with the soup. After swallowing the first spoonful Zhilin sud-
denly frowns and puts down his spoon.
"I shall have to dine at a restaurant, I suppose," he muttered.
"What's wrong?" asks his wife anxiously. "Isn't the soup
good?"
"One must have the taste of a pig to eat hogwash like that!
There's too much salt in it; it smells of dirty rags . . . more like
bugs than onions. . . . It's simply revolting, Anfissa Ivanovna," he
says, addressing the midwife. "Every day I give no end of money
for housekeeping. . . . I deny myself everything, and this is what
they provide for my dinner! I suppose they want me to give up
the office and go into the kitchen to do the cooking myself."
"The soup is very good to-day," the governess ventures tim-
idly.
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