He said just as often that he must get another table, and he said it for three years in succession.
When I listened to my employers talking about people, I was always reminded of the boot-shop. They used to talk in the same way there. It was evident to me that my present masters also thought themselves better than any one in the town. They knew the rules of correct conduct to the minutest detail, and, guided by these rules, which were not at all clear to me, they judged others pitilessly and unsparingly. This sitting in judgment aroused in me a ferocious resentment and anger against the laws of my employers, and the breaking of those laws became a source of pleasure to me.
I had a lot of work to do. I fulfilled all the duties of a housemaid, washed the kitchen over on Wednesday, cleaning the samovar and all the copper vessels, and on Saturday cleaned the floor of the rest of the house and both staircases. I had to chop and bring in the wood for the stoves, wash up, prepare vegetables for cooking, and go marketing with the mistress, carrying her basket of purchases after her, besides running errands to the shops and to the chemist.
My real mistress, grandmother's sister, a noisy, indomitable, implacably fierce old woman, rose early at six o'clock, and after washing herself in a hurry, knelt before the icon with only her chemise on, and complained long to God about her life, her children, and her daughter-in-law.
"Lord," she would exclaim, with tears in her voice, pressing her two first fingers and her thumbs against her forehead—"Lord, I ask nothing, I want nothing; only give me rest and peace, Lord, by Thy power!"
Her sobs used to wake me up, and, half asleep, I used to peep from under the blanket, and listen with terror to her passionate prayers. The autumn morning looked dimly in at the kitchen window through panes washed by the rain. On the floor in the cold twilight her gray figure swayed from side to side; she waved her arms alarmingly. Her thin, light hair fell from her small head upon her neck and shoulders from under the swathing handkerchief, which kept slipping off. She would replace it angrily with her left hand, muttering "Oh, bother you!"
Striking her forehead with force, beating her breast and her shoulders, she would wail:
"And my daughter-in-law—punish her, O Lord, on my account! Make her pay for all that she has made me suffer! And open the eyes of my son—open his eyes and Victor's! Lord, help Victor; be merciful to him!"
Victorushka also slept in the kitchen, and, hearing the groans of his mother, would cry in a sleepy voice:
"Mamasha, you are funning down the young wife again. It is really dreadful."