Marta ran out of the room. Vershina did not even look after her. She was used to taking Marta's services for granted. She was sitting deep in her sofa puffing out blue curling clouds of smoke, and compared the two men talking to each other, looking at Peredonov angrily and indifferently, at Mourin gaily and animatedly. Mourin pleased her more of the two. He had a good-natured face, while Peredonov could not even smile. She liked everything in Mourin—he was large, stout, attractive, spoke in an agreeable, low voice, and was very respectful to her. Vershina even thought at certain moments that she ought to arrange the matter so that Mourin should become engaged not to Marta but to herself. But she always ended her reflections by magnanimously yielding him to Marta.
"Anyone would marry me," she thought, "because I have money. I can choose almost anyone I like. If I liked, I could even take this young man," and she rested her glance, not without satisfaction, on Vitkevitch's youthful, impudent, yet handsome face—a boy who spoke little, ate a great deal and looked continuously at Vershina, smiling insolently.
Marta brought the bilberries and apples in an earthen-ware cup and began to relate how she had dreamed the night before that she had gone to a wedding as a brides-maid, where she ate pine-apples and pancakes with mead; on one pancake she had found a hundred-rouble note and she cried when they took it from her, and woke up in tears.
"You should have hidden it on the quiet so that no one could see it," said Peredonov rather gruffly. "If you can't even keep money in a dream, what sort of a housewife will you make?"
"There's no reason to feel sorry for this money," said Vershina. "There are many things seen in dreams!"
"I feel as if I'd really lost the money," said Marta ingenuously. "A whole hundred roubles!"
Tears appeared in her eyes, and she forced a laugh in order not to cry. Mourin anxiously put his hands into his pocket and exclaimed:
"My dear Marta Stanislavovna, don't feel so put out about it, we can soon mend the matter."
He took a hundred-rouble note from his wallet, put it before Marta on the table, and slapped his hand into her palm, shouting:
"Permit me! No one will take this away!"