"All right, uncle," she said, "I'll think it over. I myself feel it is not quite proper to live alone, far from relatives. But I can't make up my mind now--I'll have to think it over."
"Well, I am glad to see you have understood me, but what is there to think over? We'll have the horses unhitched, your trunks taken out of the cart--that's all the thinking there is to be done."
Whether her argument convinced Porfiry Vladimirych or whether the whole scene had been staged for the mere show of it, it is hard to say. Porfiry Vladimirych himself did not know whether Anninka really ought to stay at Golovliovo or whether it was simply a whim of his. At any rate, from that moment on dinner proceeded at a livelier pace. Anninka agreed to everything he said and answered his questions in a manner that did not provoke much nagging and babbling. Nevertheless, the clock showed half past two when dinner was over. Anninka jumped up from the table as if she had been sitting in a steam bath, and ran to her uncle to say good-by.
In ten minutes Yudushka, in his fur coat and bear-skin boots, saw her to the porch and in person supervised the process of seating the young mistress in the pony cart.
"Easy when you go downhill--you hear? And see that you don't drop her out at the Senkino slope!" he shouted to the driver.
Finally Anninka was seated, wrapped up, and the leather cover of the cart was fastened.
"Suppose you stay!" Yudushka shouted again, wishing that in the presence of the servants gathered about, all go off properly as befits good kinsfolk. But Anninka already felt free, and was suddenly seized with a desire to play a girlish prank. She stood up in the cart and emphasizing every word, said, "No, uncle, I will not! You are a fright!"
Yudushka pretended not to hear, but his lips turned pale.
Anninka was so overjoyed at her liberation from the Golovliovo bondage, that she did not even stop to think of the man who at her departure lost all contact with the world of living beings. She thought only of herself. She enjoyed the feeling of escape. And the sensation of freedom was so strong that when she visited the grave at Voplino again there was no longer a trace of that nervous sensibility which she had betrayed the first time. She listened to the requiem quietly, bowed before the grave without shedding a tear, and quite willingly accepted the priest's invitation to have tea with him.