It was
in March. The water under the sledge-runners was bubbling, the snow
was already covered with a rather dirty fleece, and the sun shone
warmly and merrily in the clear sky.
"Will you go to your lady as soon as we arrive?" asked Mayakin,
unexpectedly, interrupting their business talk.
"I will," said Foma, shortly, and with displeasure,
"Mm. Tell me, how often do you give her presents?" asked Mayakin,
plainly and somewhat intimately.
"What presents? What for?" Foma wondered.
"You make her no presents? You don't say. Does she live with you
then merely so, for love's sake?"
Foma boiled up with anger and shame, turned abruptly toward the
old man and said reproachfully:
"Eh! You are an old man, and yet you speak so that it is a shame
to listen to you! To say such a thing! Do you think she would
come down to this?"
Mayakin smacked his lips and sang out in a mournful voice:
"What a blockhead you are! What a fool!" and suddenly grown angry,
he spat out: "Shame upon you! All sorts of brutes drank out of the
pot, nothing but the dregs remained, and now a fool has made a god
unto himself of this dirty pot.
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