addressing Marya Kondratyevna. “I was in a hurry to find my brother.”
“Ach, as though we could take it amiss in you!” drawled Marya Kondratyevna, flattered by Alyosha’s apology. “For Dmitri Fyodorovitch often goes to the summerhouse in that way. We don’t know he is here and he is sitting in the summerhouse.”
“I am very anxious to find him, or to learn from you where he is now. Believe me, it’s on business of great importance to him.”
“He never tells us,” lisped Marya Kondratyevna.
“Though I used to come here as a friend,” Smerdyakov began again, “Dmitri Fyodorovitch has pestered me in a merciless way even here by his incessant questions about the master. ‘What news?’ he’ll ask. ‘What’s going on in there now? Who’s coming and going?’ and can’t I tell him something more. Twice already he’s threatened me with death.”