"I am afraid, master, your stuff is spent a bit too fast. I went to the cellar a while ago to get cured beef. I remembered a new tub had been begun not long ago, and—would you believe it? I look into the tub and find only two or three slices at the bottom."
"Is it possible?" said Porfiry Vladimirych, staring at her.
"If I had not seen it myself, I shouldn't have believed it, either. It's surprising what heaps of stuff are used up! Butter, barley, pickles—everything. Other folk feed their servants on gruel and goose-fat, but our servants must have it with butter, and sweet butter at that."
"Is that so?" exclaimed Porfiry Vladimirych, almost frightened.
At another time she entered casually and "reported" about the master's linen.
"Master, I think you ought to stop Yevpraksia, really. Of course, she is a girl, inexperienced, but still, take the linen for instance. She wasted piles of it on bed sheets and swaddling clothes, and it's all fine linen, you know."
Porfiry Vladimirych merely cast a fiery glance, but the whole of his empty being was thrown into convulsions by her "report."
"Of course, she cares for her infant," continued Ulita, in a mellifluous voice. "She thinks Lord knows what, a prince is going to be born. And I think that he, I mean the infant, could well sleep on fustian bedding—with such a mother."
At times she simply teased Yudushka.
"Do you know, master, what I was going to ask you?" she began. "What are you going to do about the infant? Are you going to make him your son, or will you, like other folk, put him in the foundling asylum."