“Whom? Why, any one you like.”
“You mean the Bride?”
Tikhon Ilitch flushed deeply. “Fool! What’s wrong with the Bride? She’s a peaceable, hard-working woman—”
Deniska remained silent, and picked with his finger-nail at one of the tin nailheads on the valise. Then he pretended to be stupid. “There’s a lot of them—of young women,” he drawled. “I don’t know which one you’re jabbering about. Do you happen to mean the one with whom you lived?”
But Tikhon Ilitch had already recovered his composure. “Whether I have lived with her or not is none of your business, you pig,” he retorted, and that so swiftly and peremptorily that Deniska submissively muttered:
“Well, ’tis all the same to me. I only said—’Twas a chance remark—slipped off my tongue.”
“Well, then, mind what you’re about, and don’t indulge in idle chatter. I’ll make decent people of you. Do you understand? I’ll give you a dowry. Understand that?”
Deniska reflected. “I think I’ll go to Tula—” he began.
“The cock has found a pearl! A priceless idea! What are you going to do in Tula?”
“We’re too starved at home.”