"Like them? May be. They're all right, fine bold chaps—free."
"And what's freedom to you? Do you care for freedom?"
"Well, I should think so! Be your own master, go where you please, do as you like. To be sure! If you know how to behave yourself, and you've nothing weighing upon you—it's first rate. Enjoy yourself all you can, only be mindful of God."
Chelkash spat contemptuously, and turning away from the youth, dropped the conversation.
"Here's my case now," the latter began, with sudden animation.
"As my father's dead, my bit of land's small, my mother's old,
all the land's sucked dry, what am I to do? I must live.
And how? There's no telling.
"Am I to marry into some well-to-do house? I'd be glad to, if only they'd let their daughter have her share apart.
"Not a bit of it, the devil of a father-in-law won't consent to that.
And so I shall have to slave for him—for ever so long—for years.
A nice state of things, you know!
"But if I could earn a hundred or a hundred and fifty roubles,
I could stand on my own feet, and look askance at old Antip,
and tell him straight out! Will you give Marfa her share apart?
No? all right, then! Thank God, she's not the only girl in the village.
And I should be, I mean, quite free and independent.
"Ah, yes!" the young man sighed. "But as 'tis, there's nothing for it, but to marry and live at my father-in-law's. I was thinking I'd go, d'ye see, to Kuban, and make some two hundred roubles-straight off! Be a gentleman! But there, it was no go! It didn't come off. Well, I suppose I'll have to work for my father-in-law! Be a day-laborer. For I'll never manage on my own bit— not anyhow. Heigh-ho!"
The lad extremely disliked the idea of bondage to his future father-in-law. His face positively darkened and looked gloomy. He shifted clumsily on the ground and drew Chelkash out of the reverie into which he had sunk during his speech.