and begins walking about the rooms.

"I should like to know what b-b-beast comes in here and does not
shut the door!" he grumbles angrily, wrapping his dressing-gown
about him and spitting loudly. "Take away that paper! Why is it
lying about here? We keep twenty servants, and the place is more
untidy than a pot-house. Who was that ringing? Who the devil is
that?"

"That's Anfissa, the midwife who brought our Fedya into the world,"
answers his wife.

"Always hanging about . . . these cadging toadies!"

"There's no making you out, Stepan Stepanitch. You asked her yourself,
and now you scold."

"I am not scolding; I am speaking. You might find something to do,
my dear, instead of sitting with your hands in your lap trying to
pick a quarrel. Upon my word, women are beyond my comprehension!
Beyond my comprehension! How can they waste whole days doing nothing?
A man works like an ox, like a b-beast, while his wife, the partner
of his life, sits like a pretty doll, sits and does nothing but
watch for an opportunity to quarrel with her husband by way of
diversion. It's time to drop these schoolgirlish ways, my dear. You
are not a schoolgirl, not a young lady; you are a wife and mother!
You turn away? Aha! It's not agreeable to listen to the bitter
truth!

"It's strange that you only speak the bitter truth when your liver