SAVVA
Don't recall them then.
KONDRATY (to Lipa)
I was lying in a mud puddle in all my dignity, like a regular hog.
LIPA (disgusted)
All right.
KONDRATY
But I am not ashamed to speak of it; first, because many people saw it, and of course nobody took the trouble to get me out of it except Savva Yegorovich, and secondly, because I regard this as my cross.
LIPA
A fine cross!
KONDRATY
Every man, Miss Olympiada, has his cross. It isn't so very nice to be lying in a mud puddle. Dry ground is pleasanter every time. And do you know, I think half of the water in that puddle was my own tears, and my woeful lamentations made ripples on it—