"More than I want to, I won't give," meekly answers Tamara and
bites the thread in two.

"Now that is just what I wonder at. With your mind, your beauty, I
would put such rings-around-a-rosie about a guest like that, that
he'd take me and set me up. I'd have horses of my own, and
diamonds."

"Everyone to his tastes, Jennechka. You too, now, are a very
pretty and darling girl, and your character is so independent and
brave, and yet you and I have gotten stuck in Anna Markovna's."

Jennie flares up and answers with unsimulated bitterness:

"Yes! Why not! All things come your way! ...You have all the very
best guests. You do what you want with them, but with me it's
always either old men or suckling babies. I have no luck. The ones
are snotty, the others have yellow around the mouth. More than
anything else, now, I dislike the little boys. He comes, the
little varmint; he's cowardly, he hurries, he trembles, but having
done the business, he doesn't know what to do with his eyes for
shame. He's all squirming from disgust. I just feel like giving
him one in the snout. Before giving you the rouble, he holds it in
his pocket in his fist, and that rouble's all hot, even sweaty.
The milksop! His mother gives him a ten kopeck piece for a French
roll with sausage, but he's economized out of that for a wench. I
had one little cadet in the last few days. So just on purpose, to
spite him, I say: 'Here, my dearie, here's a little caramel for
you on your way; when you're going back to your corps, you'll suck
on it.' So at first he got offended, but afterwards took it. Later