Your oxen pasture on my steppes and I have never interfered with them.

When you go to Poltava, you always ask for my waggon, and what then?
Have I ever refused?
Your children climb over the fence into my yard and play with my dogs--I never say anything; let them play, so long as they touch nothing; let them play!" "If you won't give it to me, then let us make some exchange." "What will you give me for it ?" Thereupon Ivan Nikiforovitch raised himself on his elbow, and looked at Ivan Ivanovitch.
"I will give you my dark-brown sow, the one I have fed in the sty.

A magnificent sow.

You'll see, she'll bring you a litter of pigs next year." "I do not see, Ivan Ivanovitch, how you can talk so.

What could I do with your sow?
Make a funeral dinner for the devil ?" "Again! You can't get along without the devil! It's a sin! by Heaven, it's a sin, Ivan Nikiforovitch!" "What do you mean, Ivan Ivanovitch, by offering the deuce knows what kind of a sow for my gun ?" "Why is she 'the deuce knows what,' Ivan Nikiforovitch ?" "Why?
You can judge for yourself perfectly well; here's the gun, a known thing; but the deuce knows what that sow is like! If it had not been you who said it, Ivan Ivanovitch, I might have put an insulting construction on it." "What defect have you observed in the sow ?" "For what do you take me--for a sow ?" "Sit down, sit down! I won't--No matter about your gun; let it rot and rust where it stands in the corner of the storeroom.