Sit down, Liuba, sit
down, my dear, right here on the divan, and keep house. Vodka, in
all probability, you don't drink of a morning, but I, with your
permission, will drink some ... This braces up the nerves right
off. Make mine a little stronger, please, with a piece of lemon.
Ah, what can taste better than a glass of hot tea, poured out by
charming feminine hands?"
Liubka listened to his chatter, a trifle too noisy to seem fully
natural; and her smile, in the beginning mistrusting, wary, was
softening and brightening. But she did not get on with the tea
especially well. At home, in the backwoods village, where this
beverage was still held a rarity, the dainty luxury of well-to-do
families, to be brewed only for honored guests and on great
holidays--there over the pouring of the tea officiated the eldest
man of the family. Later, when Liubka served with "all found" in
the little provincial capital city, in the beginning at a
priest's, and later with an insurance agent (who had been the
first to put her on the road of prostitution)--she was usually
left some strained, tepid tea, which had already been drunk off,
with a bit of gnawn sugar, by the mistress herself--the thin,
jaundiced, malicious wife of the priest; or the wife of the agent,
a fat, old, wrinkled, malignant, greasy, jealous and stingy common
woman.
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