"Why?'
"Because—I am sure it is."
He began to clean his bluish nails with a tiny bone stick.
"He is cleaning his nails again; well, I never!" exclaimed the mistress. "He is dying—and there he is."
"Ekh!" sighed the master. "What a lot of stupidity has flourished in you, wild fowl!"
"Why do you say that?" asked his wife, confused. But the old mistress complained passionately to God at night:
"Lord, they have laid that rotten creature on my shoulders, and Victor is again pushed on one side." Victorushka began to mock the manners of my stepfather,—his leisurely walk, the assured movements of his lordly hands, his skill in tying a cravat, and his dainty way of eating. He would ask coarsely: "Maximov, what's the French for 'knee'?"
"I am called Evgen Vassilevich," my stepfather reminded him calmly.
"All right. Well, what is 'the chest'?"
Victorushka would say to his mother at supper: "Ma mère, donnez moi encore du pickles!"