'No, you must not say that, Konstantin Narkizitch.'
'Who's going to believe that? I've seen her, you know; I saw her with my own eyes last year in Moscow.'
'Last year she had gone off a little certainly,' observed Kuprya.
'No, gentlemen, I tell you what,' a tall, thin man, with a face spotted with pimples, a valet probably, from his frizzed and pomatumed head, remarked in a careless and disdainful voice; 'let Kuprya Afanasyitch sing us his song. Come on, now; begin, Kuprya Afanasyitch.
'Yes! yes!' put in the others. 'Hoorah for Alexandra! That's one for
Kuprya; 'pon my soul … Sing away, Kuprya!… You're a regular brick,
Alexandra!' (Serfs often use feminine terminations in referring to a
man as an expression of endearment.) 'Sing away!'
'This is not the place to sing,' Kuprya replied firmly; 'this is the manor counting-house.'
'And what's that to do with you? you've got your eye on a place as clerk, eh?' answered Konstantin with a coarse laugh. 'That's what it is!'
'Everything rests with the mistress,' observed the poor wretch.
'There, that's what he's got his eye on! a fellow like him! oo! oo! a!'
And they all roared; some rolled about with merriment. Louder than all laughed a lad of fifteen, probably the son of an aristocrat among the house-serfs; he wore a waistcoat with bronze buttons, and a cravat of lilac colour, and had already had time to fill out his waistcoat.