"Afraid? I'll teach him to be afraid. I'll make him come here from Moscow, and the moment he comes I'll have him drafted into the army. He was afraid!"
Although on the decline, serfdom still existed. Anton Vasilyev had known his mistress to impose the most peculiar punishments, but, even so, her present decision was so unexpected that it made him miserable. He thought of his nickname Telltale. Ivan Mikhailov was an upright peasant, and Anton never dreamed that misfortune would touch him. Besides, Ivan Mikhailov was his friend and godfather. Now, all of a sudden, he was to be made a soldier just because he, Anton Vasilyev, the Telltale, could not hold his tongue.
"Forgive him--Ivan Mikhailov, I mean," he pleaded.
"Go away, you mollycoddler," she shouted in a voice so loud that he lost all desire to intercede any further for his friend.
Arina Petrovna was sixty years old, still of sound health and accustomed to have her own way in everything. Her manner was severe. She lived alone, and managed the huge Golovliov estate all by herself, without having to answer to any one else. She calculated closely, almost parsimoniously, was not intimate with her neighbors, was gracious to the local authorities, and exacted implicit obedience from her children. They were not to do anything without first asking themselves, "What would mamenka say about it?" She was independent, inflexible, even stubborn, though her stubbornness was not so much native as due chiefly to the circumstance that there was not one person in the whole Golovliov family that could oppose her. Her husband was a trifling creature, and drank. Arina Petrovna used to say of herself that she was neither a widow nor a married woman. Some of the children were in St. Petersburg, the others took after their father and were relegated to the class of "horrid creatures," who were unfit for household duties. In these circumstances Arina Petrovna soon began to feel all left alone, and grew totally disaccustomed to family life, although the word "family" was constantly on her lips, and outwardly she seemed to be exclusively guided in all her work by the desire to build up the family estate and keep the family affairs in order.