But at that she cried indignantly:
"Lord! why on earth should you work in the large drawing-room?"
At the door of the closet appeared the angry face of Matrena Ivanovna, flushed with the heat of the stove. She called out:
"You see how it is, Vassia? She knows that you are working, and yet she can't be satisfied with the other four rooms."
Victor laughed maliciously, but the master said: "That will do!"
And the daughter-in-law, with a venomously eloquent gesture, sank into a chair and groaned:
"I am dying! I am dying!"
"Don't hinder my work, the devil take you!" roared the master, turning pale with the exertion. "This is nothing better than a mad-house. Here am I breaking my back to feed you. Oh, you wild fowl!"
At first these quarrels used to alarm me, especially when the mistress, seizing a table knife, rushed into the closet, and, shutting both the doors, began to shriek like a mad thing. For a minute the house was quiet, then the master, having tried to force the door, stooped down, and called out to me:
"Climb up on my back and unfasten the hook."