"No! You must let me sit at your own table. I'll not have it on a tray. I want it on a tablecloth. I'm the landlady and I will be respected. Never mind if I'm drunk. I'm at least honest and a good wife to my husband."
Varvara, smiling at once with contempt and fear, said: "Yes, we know."
Ershova winked at Varvara, laughed hoarsely and snapped her fingers defiantly. She became more and more arrogant.
"Cousin!" she shouted. "We know the sort of cousin you are. Why doesn't the Head-Master's wife come to see you, eh?"
"Don't make so much noise," said Varvara.
But Ershova began to shout even louder:
"How dare you order me about? I'm in my own house and I can do what I please. If I like I can have you thrown out so that there'd not even be a smell of you left behind. Only I'm too kind-hearted."
Meanwhile Volodin and Prepolovenskaya sat timidly at the window in silence. Prepolovenskaya smiled slightly, looking at the shrew out of the corner of her eye, but pretended that she was looking into the street. Volodin sat with an injured expression on his face.
Ershova eventually became more good-humoured and gave Varvara a friendly slap on the shoulder, saying with a drunken smile:
"Now listen to me. Put me at your table and treat me like a lady. Then give me some zhamochki[3], and treat your landlady decently. Come, my dear girl!"