When Ulita answered the summons to the family council she made wry faces at first and refused to be seated. But when Arina Petrovna shouted at her in a kindly way, "Sit down,--will you? What's the use of your tricks? God made us all equal--be seated." Ulita sat down and kept silence a while. Very shortly, however, her tongue unloosened.
She, too, had her reminiscences. Her memory was stuffed with filth from the days of her serfdom. Beside the carrying out of delicate commissions like dogging the amorous doings of the maids' room, Ulita had also held the office of leech and apothecary in the Golovliovo manor. It was she who made all the injections, and applied the cupping-glasses and mustard plasters. She had given even the old master, Vladimir Mikhailych and Arina Petrovna injections, and the young master, too--every one of them. She retained the most grateful memories, and now there was a boundless field for all her reminiscences.
A new mysterious life animated the Golovliovo manor. Arina Petrovna would come over from Pogorelka every now and then to pay her "good son" a visit and supervise preparations that as yet were given no name. After the evening, the three women would go into Yevpraksia's room, would eat some homemade jam, play fool, and, till late into the night, would revel in reminiscences that would often make the heroine of the occasion blush. The least incident, the smallest trifle, served as a pretext for endless narrations. Yevpraksia brought some raspberry jam, and Arina Petrovna began a story that when she was carrying her daughter Sonya she could not stand even the smell of raspberries.
"No sooner did a raspberry come into the house than I began to yell at the top of my voice, 'Out, out with that damned thing!' After my confinement it was all right again; I liked raspberries again."
Yevpraksia brought some caviar--and Arina Petrovna had an incident to recall in connection with caviar, too.
"A really wonderful thing happened to me in connection with caviar. It was a month or two after I was married and suddenly I was seized with such a strong desire for caviar that I simply had to have it at any cost. I would sneak into the cellar and eat as much as I could. And once I said to my husband, 'Vladimir Mikhailych, why is it that I eat caviar all the time?' He smiled at me, you know, and said, 'My dear, it is because you are pregnant.' And surely enough, just nine months afterward I gave birth to Simple Simon."