"He may be an entertainment to you but to him——"
But Darya interrupted her and said in a sympathetic voice:
"Oh, I can see that those silly Peredonovian tales have reached you. Of course, you know that he's quite mad? The Head-Master does not even allow him to go to the gymnasia now. They're only waiting for an alienist to examine him and then he will be dismissed from the school."
"But, allow me," Ekaterina Ivanovna interrupted her with increasing irritation. "I am not interested in this schoolmaster but in my nephew. I have heard that you—pardon me—are corrupting him."
And having thrown out this decisive word in her anger with the sisters, Ekaterina Ivanovna at once saw that she had gone too far. The sisters exchanged glances of such well-simulated perplexity and indignation that cleverer people than Ekaterina Ivanovna would have been taken in—they flushed and exclaimed altogether:
"That's pleasant!"
"How terrible!"
"That's something new!"
"Madam," said Darya coldly, "you are not over choice in your expressions. Before you make use of such words you should find out whether they are fitting!"
"Of course, one can understand that," said Liudmilla, with the look of a charming girl forgiving an injury, "he's not a stranger to you. Naturally, you can't help being disturbed by this stupid gossip. Even strangers like ourselves were sorry for him and had to be kind to him. But everything in our town is made a crime at once. You have no idea what terrible, terrible people live here!"