Old Tsybukin went to the town for a short time. Someone told Aksinya that he had gone to the notary to make his will and that he was leaving Butyokino, the very place where she had set up a brickyard, to Nikifor, his grandson. She was informed of this in the morning when old Tsybukin and Varvara were sitting near the steps under the birch tree, drinking their tea. She closed the shop in the front and at the back, gathered together all the keys she had, and flung them at her father-in-law’s feet.
“I am not going on working for you,” she began in a loud voice, and suddenly broke into sobs. “It seems I am not your daughter-in-law, but a servant! Everybody’s jeering and saying, ‘See what a servant the Tsybukins have got hold of!’ I did not come to you for wages! I am not a beggar, I am not a slave, I have a father and mother.”
She did not wipe away her tears, she fixed upon her father-in-law eyes full of tears, vindictive, squinting with wrath; her face and neck were red and tense, and she was shouting at the top of her voice.
“I don’t mean to go on being a slave!” she went on. “I am worn out. When it is work, when it is sitting in the shop day in and day out, scurrying out at night for vodka—then it is my share, but when it is giving away the land then it is for that convict’s wife and her imp. She is mistress here, and I am her servant. Give her everything, the convict’s wife, and may it choke her! I am going home! Find yourselves some other fool, you damned Herods!”
Tsybukin had never in his life scolded or punished his children, and had never dreamed that one of his family could speak to him rudely or behave disrespectfully; and now he was very much frightened; he ran into the house and there hid behind the cupboard. And Varvara was so much flustered that she could not get up from her seat, and only waved her hands before her as though she were warding off a bee.
“Oh, Holy Saints! what’s the meaning of it?” she muttered in horror. “What is she shouting? Oh, dear, dear! … People will hear! Hush. Oh, hush!”