are mine! : Ours! : Mine! : Ours!
: Mine! [ Enter Chubukov ] C HUBUKOV : What’s the matter? What are you shouting for? : Papa, please tell this gentleman who owns Oxen Meadows, we or he?
C HUBUKOV : [ to Lomov ] Darling, the Meadows are ours! : But, please, Stepan Stepanovitch, how can they be yours? Do be a reasonable man! My aunt’s grandmother gave the Meadows for the temporary and free use of your grandfather’s peasants.
The peasants used the land for forty years and got accustomed to it as if it was their own, when it happened that... C HUBUKOV : Excuse me, my precious. You forget just this, that the peasants didn’t pay your grandmother and all that, because the Meadows were in dispute, and so on. And now everybody knows that they’re ours.
It means that you haven’t seen the plan. : I’ll prove to you that they’re mine! C HUBUKOV : You won’t prove it, my darling — : I shall C HUBUKOV : Dear one, why yell like that? You won’t prove anything just by yelling.
I don’t want anything of yours, and don’t intend to give up what I have. Why should I? And you know, my beloved, that if you propose to go on arguing about it, I’d much sooner give up the Meadows to the peasants than to you. There!
: I don’t understand! How have you the right to give away somebody else’s property? C HUBUKOV : You may take it that I know whether I have the right or not. Because, young man, I’m not used to being spoken to in that tone of voice, and so on.
I, young man, am twice your age, and ask you to speak to me without agitating yourself, and all that. : No, you just think I’m a fool and want to have me on! You call my land yours, and then you want me to talk to you calmly and politely! Good neighbours don’t behave like that, Stepan Stepanovitch!
You’re not a neighbour, you’re a grabber!