Arína, or, as the peasants had called her when she was still a maiden, Aríshka-Burlák,[1] supported her chin with the fist of her right hand, which, in its turn, was resting on the palm of her left hand; and, without hearing what the master had still to say, began to speak in such a penetrating and loud voice that the whole hut was filled with sound, and in the street it might have appeared that several women were speaking at the same time.
"What use, father, is there of speaking to him? He can't even speak like a man. There he stands, blockhead," she continued, contemptuously pointing with her head to Davýdka's wretched, massive figure. "My farm, your Grace? We are mendicants; there are no people in your whole village more wretched: we have neither of our own, nor anything for the manorial dues—a shame! He has brought us to all this. I bore him, raised, and fed him, and with anticipation waited for him to grow up. Here he is: the grain is bursting, but there is no more work in him than in this rotten log. All he knows how to do is to lie on the oven, or to stand and scratch his stupid head," she said, mocking him. "If you, father, could threaten him somehow! I beg you: punish him for the Lord's sake; send him to the army, and make an end of it. I have lost my patience with him, I tell you."
"How is it you are not ashamed, Davýdka, to bring your mother to such a state?" said Nekhlyúdov, reproachfully turning to the peasant.
Davýdka did not budge.
"It would be different if he were a sickly man," Arína continued, with the same vivacity and gestures, "but you look at him, he is fatter than a mill pig. He is a good-looking chap, fit enough to work! But no, he lies like a lubber all day on the oven. My eyes get tired looking when he undertakes to do something; when he rises, or
- ↑ Burlák is a labourer towing boats up the Vólga.
