Oh yes! it is always that.

Akulina can make good things to eat, and good tea and good punch to drink, and Akulina is the Archangel Michael in the kitchen.

But if Akulina says to you, 'Save a penny here, do not lend more than you have there,' Akulina is a fool and must be told to choose her language, lest it be too indelicate for the dandified ears of the high-born gentleman! I should not wonder if, by choosing her language carefully enough, Akulina ended by making the high-born gentleman understand something after all.
His perception cannot possibly be so dull as yours, Christian Gregorovitch, my little husband." Akulina paused for breath after her tremendous invective, which, indeed, was only intended by her for the preface of the real discourse, so fertile was her imagination and so thoroughly roused was her eloquence by the sense of injury received.

While she was speaking, Fischelowitz, whose terror of his larger half was only relative, had calmly risen and had wound up the "Wiener Gigerl" to the extreme of the doll's powers, placing it on the counter before him and sitting down before it in anticipation of the amusement he expected to derive from its performance.

In the short silence which ensued while Akulina was resting her lungs for a second and more deadly effort, the wretched little musical box made itself heard, clicking and scratching and grinding out a miserable little polka.