"Yes, indeed! You were playing foul!"
"Well, I say! I never do such things."
"No? Who was it I caught a little while ago? Who wanted to slip through a seven of clubs and an eight of hearts and call them a pair? Well, I saw it myself and I myself showed you up!" While talking Yevpraksia rose to remove the tea-pot from the samovar and turned her back to Arina Petrovna.
"My, what a back you have! God bless you!" Arina Petrovna exclaimed, in involuntary admiration.
"Yes, a wonderful back," Yudushka repeated mechanically.
"My back again! Aren't you ashamed of yourself? What has my back done to you?" Yevpraksia turned her back first to the right, then to the left, and smiled. Her back was her joy. A few days before even the cook Savelich, an old man, had looked at her admiringly and said: "Well, well, what a back! Just like a hearth-plate!" She did not, be it noticed, complain to Porfiry Vladimirych about the cook's remark.
The cups were filled with tea over and over again, and the samovar grew silent. Meanwhile the snowstorm became fiercer and fiercer. A veritable cataract of snow struck the windowpanes every now and then, and wild sobs ran at intervals down the chimney flue.
"The storm seems to be in real earnest," said Arina Petrovna. "Listen to it howling and whining."
"Oh, well, let it whine. The blizzard keeps on whining and we keep on drinking tea. That's how it is, mother dear," replied Porfiry Vladimirych.
"It must be a terrible thing for one to be out in the fields now."