ny happy returns, though I've said it before. In the
old days when father was alive, every time we had a name-day, thirty or
forty officers used to come, and there was lots of noise and fun, and
to-day there's only a man and a half, and it's as quiet as a desert...
I'm off... I've got the hump to-day, and am not at all cheerful, so
don't you mind me. [Laughs through her tears] We'll have a talk later
on, but good-bye for the present, my dear; I'll go somewhere.

IRINA. [Displeased] You are queer....

OLGA. [Crying] I understand you, Masha.

SOLENI. When a man talks philosophy, well, it is philosophy or at any
rate sophistry; but when a woman, or two women, talk philosophy--it's
all my eye.

MASHA. What do you mean by that, you very awful man?

SOLENI. Oh, nothing. You came down on me before I could say... help!
[Pause.]

MASHA. [Angrily, to OLGA] Don't cry!

[Enter ANFISA and FERAPONT with a cake.]

ANFISA. This way, my dear. Come in, your feet are clean. [To IRINA] From
the District Council, from Mihail Ivanitch Protopopov... a cake.

IRINA. Thank you. Please thank him. [Takes the cake.]

FERAPONT. What?

IRINA. [Louder] Please thank him.

OLGA. Give him a pie, nurse. Ferapont, go, she'll give you a pie.

FERAPONT. What?

ANFISA. Come on, gran'fer, Ferapont Spiridonitch. Come on. [Exeunt.]

MASHA. I don't like this Mihail Potapitch or Ivanitch, Protopopov. We
oughtn't to invite him here.

IRINA. I never asked him.

MASHA. That's all right.

[Enter CHEBUTIKIN followed by a soldier with a silver samovar; there is
a rumble of dissatisfied surprise.]

OLGA. [Covers her face with her hands] A samovar! That's awful! [Exit
into the dining-room, to the table.]

IRINA. My dear Ivan Romanovitch, what are you doing!

TUZENBACH. [Laughs] I told you so!

MASHA. Ivan Romanovitch, you are simply shameless!

CHEBUTIKIN. My dear good girl, you are the only thing, and the dearest
thing I have in the world. I'll soon be sixty. I'm an old man, a lonely
worthless old man. The only good thing in me is my love for you, and if
it hadn't been for that, I would have been dead long ago.... [To IRINA]
My dear little girl, I've known you since the day of your birth, I've
carried you in my arms... I loved your dead mother....

MASHA. But your presents are so expensive!

CHEBUTIKIN. [Angrily, through his tears] Expensive presents.... You
really, are!... [To the orderly] Take the samovar in there.... [Teasing]
Expensi