“All right,” replied Petrúshka with a smile, and promptly snatching his cap down from a nail he ran away to harness.
While the horse was being harnessed the talk returned to the point at which it had stopped when Vasíli Andréevich drove up to the window. The old man had been complaining to his neighbour, the village elder, about his third son who had not sent him anything for the holiday though he had sent a French shawl to his wife.
“The young people are getting out of hand,” said the old man.
“And how they do!” said the neighbour. “There’s no managing them! They know too much. There’s Demóchkin now, who broke his father’s arm. It’s all from being too clever, it seems.”
Nikíta listened, watched their faces, and evidently would have liked to share in the conversation, but he was too busy drinking his tea and only nodded his head approvingly. He emptied one tumbler after another and grew warmer and warmer and more and more comfortable. The talk continued on the same subject for a long time—the harmfulness of a household dividing up—and it was clearly not an abstract discussion but concerned the question of a separation in that house; a separation demanded by the second son who sat there morosely silent.
It was evidently a sore subject and absorbed them all, but out of propriety they did not discuss their private affairs before strangers. At last, however, the old man could not restrain himself, and with tears in his eyes declared that he would not consent to a breakup of the family during his lifetime, that his house was prospering, thank God, but that if they separated they would all have to go begging.
“Just like the Matvéevs,” said the neighbour. “They used to have a proper house, but now they’ve split up none of them has anything.”