“You listen, old man. While I was always drinking with Filka, my mother comes up to me one day⁠—I was lying down. ‘Why are you lying there, you rascal?’ says she. ‘You are a blackguard,’ says she. She swore at me in fact. ‘You get married,’ says she. ‘You marry Akulka. They’ll be glad to marry her now even to you, they’d give you three hundred roubles in money alone.’ ‘But she is disgraced in the eyes of all the world,’ says I. ‘You are a fool,’ says she, ‘the wedding ring covers all, it will be all the better for you if she feels her guilt all her life. And their money will set us on our feet again. I’ve talked it over with Marya Stepanovna already. She is very ready to listen.’ ‘Twenty roubles down on the table and I’ll marry her,’ says I. And would you believe it, right up to the day of the wedding I was drunk. And Filka Morozov was threatening me, too: ‘I’ll break all your ribs, Akulka’s husband,’ says he, ‘and I’ll sleep with your wife every night if I please.’ ‘You lie, you dog’s flesh,’ says I. And then he put me to shame before all the street. I ran home: ‘I won’t be married,’ says I, ‘if they don’t lay down another fifty roubles on the spot.’ ”

“But did they agree to her marrying you?”