anything, he'd obey her on the spot. She'd even make a joke of him before other people, before strangers. Well, she drove him into a decline, at last. And so it was Krupovaty's brother died. And you know, she was a cook, and an old woman too, very old. (Onisim took a pinch of snuff.) Confound the lot of them, these girls and women-folk!'
'She doesn't care for me a bit, that's clear, at last; that's beyond all doubt, at last,' Pyetushkov muttered in an undertone, gesticulating with his head and hands as though he were explaining to a perfectly extraneous person some perfectly extraneous fact.
'Yes,' Onisim resumed, 'there are women like that.'
'There are,' listlessly repeated Pyetushkov, in a tone half questioning, half perplexed.
Onisim looked intently at his master.
'Ivan Afanasiitch,' he began, 'wouldn't you have a snack of something?'
'Wouldn't I have a snack of something?' repeated Pyetushkov.
'Or may be you'd like to have a pipe?'
'To have a pipe?' repeated Pyetushkov.
'So this is what it's coming to,' muttered Onisim. 'It's gone deep, it seems.'
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