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.

Devil! You just go up to her and tell her plainly: 'I want to be your lover.

I am a young man, don't charge me much for it.'" "Godfather!" said Foma, sternly, in a threatening voice, "I cannot bear to hear such words.

If it were someone else." "But who except myself would caution you?
Good God!" Mayakin cried out, clasping his hands.