Page:Leo Tolstoi - Life Is Worth Living and Other Stories - tr. Adolphus Norraikow (1892).djvu/35

 28 but Trifonoff did not pay me. He promised to do so to-morrow."

Matreona on hearing this became still more angry because her husband had not bought the fur coat, and the only kaftan they owned he had given to the strange man whom he had brought home with him.

Simeon's wife snatched the bill from the table and carried it to a place of safety, muttering as she went: "I have no supper for you. I cannot feed all the naked tramps you choose to pick up and bring here with you."

"Oh, Matreona," said he, "do hold your tongue! Listen to what we have to say before you condemn us."

But the shoemaker's wife retorted: “I will not become much wiser by listening to the chatter of drunken fools. I had good reasons for not wishing to marry you, you drunkard, for you have drunk up all the linen which my mother gave me on my wedding-day. You got money to buy a fur coat and you drank that too!"