"They're cracked! How funny!"
"Accursed carrion!" said Varvara angrily.
"Yes, carrion," agreed Volodin with a grin. "Just wait, my dear landlady, I'll show you something! Let's go and make a mess in the parlour too. She won't come back again to-day anyhow, she'll tire herself out and go home to sleep."
He burst into his bleating laughter and jumped about like a great ram. Prepolovenskaya encouraged him:
"Yes, go ahead, Pavel Vassilyevitch, and make a mess. We don't care a rap for her! If she does come back we can tell her that she did it herself when she was drunk."
Volodin, skipping and laughing, ran into the parlour and began to smear and rub his boots on the wall-paper.
"Varvara Dmitrievna, get me a piece of rope!" he shouted.
Varvara, waddling like a duck, passed through the parlour into the bedroom and brought back with her a piece of frayed, knotted rope. Volodin made a noose, then stood up on a chair in the middle of the room and hung the noose on the lamp-bracket.
"That's for the landlady," he explained. "So that when you leave she'll have somewhere to hang herself in her rage!"
Both women squealed with laughter.