"Go on, go on, and don't give me any lies."
"He went to the German Club. He thought he would find a fool to beat at cards, but instead he happened on a cunning hawk. He tried to get away, but was held up in the lobby. Of course, he was plucked clean."
"I suppose he was roughly handled, too."
"Of course. The next morning he came to our man, Ivan Mikhailych, and told the tale himself. It's queer, he was in high spirits and laughed as if they had treated him like a lord."
"Things run from him like water off a duck's back. But I won't grieve over it, provided he does not come within sight of me."
"But I believe he will."
"Nonsense, I will not allow him to cross my threshold."
"But I'm sure he will," insisted Anton Vasilyev. "He said so in plain words to Ivan Mikhailych. 'Enough,' he says, 'I am going back to the old woman to eat her dry crusts.' And, madam, to speak the truth, where can he lay his head but here? He cannot keep on forever feeding on our men in Moscow. And besides, he needs clothing and comforts."
That was exactly the thing Arina Petrovna dreaded. It was the very essence of the obscure thought that so deeply alarmed her. "Yes, he will turn up," she said to herself, "he has no other place to go to, there's no doubt of it." He would always be there, within her sight, that accursed, hated stranger of a son. What had been the good of throwing his portion to him? She had thought that, having received "his due," he would drop into eternity. And there he was, rising from the dead. He would come, make insolent demands, and hang on like a leech, shocking everybody by his beggarly appearance. And she would have to meet his demands, because he was a brazen-faced bully, capable of any violence. You cannot put such a man under restraint; he is capable of parading in tatters before strangers, of the wildest debauchery, of running away to the neighbors and telling them the ins and outs of the family affairs. Should she have him deported to the Suzdal Monastery, which was said to be a place for ridding parents in distress of the sight of their refractory children? But the Lord knows whether that fabulous institution existed at all. People said there were such things as houses of correction. But how could one get an overgrown dolt into one of them?
In short, Arina Petrovna was altogether upset by the thought of how the arrival of Simple Simon was going to disturb her peaceful existence.