BORIS. If we showed a proper respect for his authority.
KULIGIN. Then there's no doubt, sir, you'll never see your fortune.
BORIS. No, but that's not all, Kuligin! First he finds fault with us to his heart's content, and ends none the less with giving us nothing, or some tiny dole. And then he'll go making out that it's a great favour, and that he ought not to have done even that.
KUDRIASH. That's just the way the merchants go on among us. Besides, if you were ever so respectful to him, who's to hinder him from saying you're disrespectful?
BORIS. To be sure. And indeed he sometimes will say: I've children of my own, why should I give money away to outsiders? Am I to wrong my own like that?
KULIGIN. It's plain, sir, you're not in luck's way.
BORIS. If it were only me, I wouldn't care! I'd throw it all up and go away. But I'm sorry for my sister. He did write for her to come too, but mother's relations wouldn't let her, they wrote she wasn't well. It frightens me to think what the life here would be for her.
KUDRIASH. Of course. The master's no decent manners at all.
KULIGIN. In what capacity do you live with him, sir; what arrangement has he made with you?
BORIS. Why, none whatever; "you live with me," he says, "and do what you're told, and your pay shall be what I give you," that's to say, in a year's time he'll settle up with me as he thinks fit.