"What made you come over to us to-day?" Arina Petrovna continued with her questioning.
"We meant to come a long time ago, grandma, but today Ulita sent a messenger to say the doctor had been here and uncle was going to die, if not to-day, then surely to-morrow."
"Tell me, is there any talk among you about the heritage?"
"We keep talking about it the whole day, granny. Papa tells us how it used to be before grandpa's time. He even remembers Goriushkino, granny. 'See now,' he says, 'if Auntie Varvara Mikhailovna had no children, then Goriushkino would be ours. And God knows,' he says, 'who the children's father is. But let us not judge others. We see a mote in the eye of our neighbor, but fail to notice a beam in our own. That's how the world goes, brother.'"
"Nonsense, nonsense. Auntie was married, was she not? Even if there had been anything before that, the marriage made it all straight."
"That's true, grandma, and each time we go past Goriushkino, he brings up the same old tale: 'Grandma Natalya Vladimirovna,' he says, 'brought Goriushkino as a dowry. By all rights it should have stayed in the family. But your deceased grandfather gave it to sister as a dot. And what wonderful watermelons,' he says, 'used to grow at Goriushkino! Twenty pounds each. That's the kind of watermelons that grew there!'"
"Twenty pounds, bosh! I never heard of such melons. Well, and what are his intentions about Dubrovino?"
"In the same line, granny. Watermelons and muskmelons and other trifles. But of late he has constantly been asking us, 'What do you think, children, has uncle Pavel much money?' He has had it all figured out for a long time, grandma: the amount of redemption loan, and when the property was mortgaged, and how much debt is paid off. We even saw the paper on which he made the calculations; and guess what, granny, we stole it. We nearly drove him crazy with that slip of paper. He'd put it in a drawer, and we'd match the key and stick it into a holy wafer. Once he went to take a bath, when lo and behold! he saw the paper lying on the bath shelf."
"You've a gay life up there."
Volodenka returned and became the center of general attention.