rarely went up to her, and if he wanted anything, used always to call, in
his delicate voice, from his study: 'Aunt Platosha!' However, she made him
sit down, and sat all alert, in expectation of his first words, watching
him through her spectacles with one eye, over them with the other. She did
not inquire after his health nor offer him tea, as she saw he had not come
for that. Aratov was a little disconcerted ... then he began to talk ...
talked of his mother, of how she had lived with his father and how his
father had got to know her. All this he knew very well ... but it was just
what he wanted to talk about. Unluckily for him, Platosha did not know
how to keep up a conversation at all; she gave him very brief replies, as
though she suspected that was not what Yasha had come for.

'Eh!' she repeated, hurriedly, almost irritably plying her
knitting-needles. 'We all know: your mother was a darling ... a darling
that she was.... And your father loved her as a husband should, truly and
faithfully even in her grave; and he never loved any other woman': she
added, raising her voice and taking off her spectacles.

'And was she of a retiring disposition?' Aratov inquired, after a short
silence.

'Retiring! to be sure she was. As a woman should be. Bold ones have sprung
up nowadays.'

'And were there no bold ones in your time?'

'There were in our time too ... to be sure there were! But who were they? A
pack of strumpets, shameless hussies. Draggle-tails--for ever gadding about
after no good.... What do they care? It's little they take to heart. If
some poor fool comes in their way, they pounce on him. But sensible folk