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A VITAL QUESTION.
139

"Izvoshchik!"

"Where do you want to go, lady?" Where did she want to go? she heard her daughter say, "To Karavannaïa Street"; but her daughter turned to the left down the Nevsky. Where does she want to go?

"I want to overtake her yonder, that beast!"

"To ketch some one? Speak sense; where do you want to go? How can I go without any directions? And you hain't given me any idea."

Marya Alekséyevna entirely lost control of herself, and she began to berate the izvoshchik.

"You are drunk, baruina; that's all there is of it," said the izvoshchik, and left her. Marya Alekséyevna ran after him, still scolding, and she shouted at the other izvoshchiks, and she dashed in all directions for some time, and she gesticulated with her hands, and then she went back under the colonnade, and she kicked and she acted like a mad woman; and around her were gathered half a dozen rude fellows, who had been peddling various articles around the columns of the Gostinui Dvor. The fellows were laughing at her, and they exchanged among themselves words of more or less unfavorable character, and they praised her ironically, and they offered her their advice to be calm.

"Ay! da! baruina! how early you managed to get full! lively baruina!"

"Baruina! ah! baruina! buy half a dozen lemons of me; they are good to take when you're tipsy; I'll let thee have them cheap."

"Baruina! ah! baruina! don't listen to him; a lemon won't do you the least good; but go and take a nap."

"Baruina! ah! baruina! you're a good hand at scolding; let's get up a scolding match, and see who'll beat!"

Marya Alekséyevna, not knowing at all what she was about, boxed the ears of one of the nearest of her interlocutors,—a fellow of seventeen, who, not without grace, was stretching out his tongue at her; his hat flew off, and his hair was right at hand. Marya Alekséyevna got her fingers into it. This act roused the rest of her interlocutors into a state of indescribable enthusiasm.

"Ay! baruina! give it to him!" Others shouted:—

"Fyedka! give it back to her in small change!"

But the majority of the interlocutors were on Marya Alekséyevna's side.