thousand I should refuse. I'm a free man. And
everything that all you people, rich and poor, value so highly and so
dearly hasn't the least influence over me; it's like a flock of down in
the wind. I can do without you, I can pass you by. I'm strong and proud.
Mankind goes on to the highest truths and to the highest happiness such
as is only possible on earth, and I go in the front ranks!

LOPAKHIN. Will you get there?

TROFIMOV. I will. [Pause] I'll get there and show others the way. [Axes
cutting the trees are heard in the distance.]

LOPAKHIN. Well, good-bye, old man. It's time to go. Here we stand
pulling one another's noses, but life goes its own way all the time.
When I work for a long time, and I don't get tired, then I think more
easily, and I think I get to understand why I exist. And there are so
many people in Russia, brother, who live for nothing at all. Still, work
goes on without that. Leonid Andreyevitch, they say, has accepted a post
in a bank; he will get sixty thousand roubles a year.... But he won't
stand it; he's very lazy.

ANYA. [At the door] Mother asks if you will stop them cutting down the
orchard until she has gone away.

TROFIMOV. Yes, really, you ought to have enough tact not to do that.
[Exit.]

LOPAKHIN, All right, all right... yes, he's right. [Exit.]

ANYA. Has Fiers been sent to the hospital?

YASHA. I gave the order this morning. I suppose they've sent him.

ANYA. [To EPIKHODOV, who crosses the room] Simeon Panteleyevitch, please
make inquiries if Fiers has been sent to the hospital.

YASHA. [Offended] I told Egor this morning. What's the use of asking ten
times!

EPIKHODOV. The aged Fiers, in my conclusive opinion, isn't worth
mending; his forefathers had better have him. I only envy him. [Puts
a trunk on a hat-box and squashes it] Well, of course. I thought so!
[Exit.]

YASHA. [Grinning] Two-and-twenty troubles.

VARYA. [Behind the door] Has Fiers been taken away to the hospital?

ANYA. Yes.

VARYA. Why didn't they take the letter to the doctor?

ANYA. It'll have to be sent after him. [Exit.]

VARYA. [In the next room] Where's Yasha? Tell him his mother's come and
wants to say good-bye to him.

YASHA. [Waving his hand] She'll make me lose all patience!

[DUNYASHA has meanwhile been bustling round the luggage; now that YASHA
is left alone, she goes up to him.]

DUNYASHA. If you only looked at me once, Yasha. You're going away,
leaving me behind.

[Weeps and