Sanine smiled. “I do everything.”
“But why do you want to go there?”
“Because I’m tired of living here with you, mother,” said Sanine frankly.
Maria Ivanovna felt somewhat hurt.
“Thank you,” she said.
Sanine looked attentively at her, and felt inclined to tell her not to be so silly as to imagine that a man, especially one who had no employment, could care to remain always in the same place. But it irked him to have to say such a thing; and he was silent.
Maria Ivanovna took out her pocket-handkerchief and crumpled it nervously in her fingers. If it had not been for Sarudine’s letter and her consequent distress and anxiety, she would have bitterly resented her son’s rudeness. But, as it was, she merely said:
“Ah! yes, the one slinks out of the house like a wolf, and the other…”
A gesture of resignation completed the sentence.
Sanine looked up quickly, and put down his pen.