KULIGIN. [Shouts] Good-bye!
[At the back of the stage FEDOTIK and RODE meet MASHA; they say good-bye and go out with her.]
IRINA. They’ve gone.... [Sits on the bottom step of the terrace.]
CHEBUTIKIN. And they forgot to say good-bye to me.
IRINA. But why is that?
CHEBUTIKIN. I just forgot, somehow. Though I’ll soon see them again, I’m going to-morrow. Yes... just one day left. I shall be retired in a year, then I’ll come here again, and finish my life near you. I’ve only one year before I get my pension.... [Puts one newspaper into his pocket and takes another out] I’ll come here to you and change my life radically... I’ll be so quiet... so agree... agreeable, respectable....
IRINA. Yes, you ought to change your life, dear man, somehow or other.
CHEBUTIKIN. Yes, I feel it. [Sings softly.] “Tarara-boom-deay....”
KULIGIN. We won’t reform Ivan Romanovitch! We won’t reform him!
CHEBUTIKIN. If only I was apprenticed to you! Then I’d reform.