'I was twenty and over then.'
'But could you learn a trade at twenty?'
'I suppose one could, some way, since the master ordered it. But he luckily died soon after, and they sent me back to the country.'
'And when were you taught to cook?'
Sutchok lifted his thin yellowish little old face and grinned.
'Is that a thing to be taught?… Old women can cook.'
'Well,' I commented, 'you have seen many things, Kuzma, in your time!
What do you do now as a fisherman, seeing there are no fish?'
'Oh, your honour, I don't complain. And, thank God, they made me a fisherman. Why another old man like me—Andrey Pupir—the mistress ordered to be put into the paper factory, as a ladler. "It's a sin," she said, "to eat bread in idleness." And Pupir had even hoped for favour; his cousin's son was clerk in the mistress's counting-house: he had promised to send his name up to the mistress, to remember him: a fine way he remembered him!… And Pupir fell at his cousin's knees before my eyes.'
'Have you a family? Have you married?'
'No, your honour, I have never been married. Tatyana Vassilyevna—God rest her soul!—did not allow anyone to marry. "God forbid!" she said sometimes, "here am I living single: what indulgence! What are they thinking of!"'