to make them a pleasant...

NATALYA STEPANOVNA. I can't make head or tail of all this about aunts
and grandfathers and grandmothers! The Meadows are ours, and that's all.

LOMOV. Mine.

NATALYA STEPANOVNA. Ours! You can go on proving it for two days on end,
you can go and put on fifteen dress-jackets, but I tell you they're
ours, ours, ours! I don't want anything of yours and I don't want to
give up anything of mine. So there!

LOMOV. Natalya Ivanovna, I don't want the Meadows, but I am acting on
principle. If you like, I'll make you a present of them.

NATALYA STEPANOVNA. I can make you a present of them myself, because
they're mine! Your behaviour, Ivan Vassilevitch, is strange, to say the
least! Up to this we have always thought of you as a good neighbour, a
friend: last year we lent you our threshing-machine, although on that
account we had to put off our own threshing till November, but you
behave to us as if we were gipsies. Giving me my own land, indeed!
No, really, that's not at all neighbourly! In my opinion, it's even
impudent, if you want to know....

LOMOV. Then you make out that I'm a land-grabber? Madam, never in my
life have I grabbed anybody else's land, and I shan't allow anybody to
accuse me of having done so.... [Quickly steps to the carafe and drinks
more water] Oxen Meadows are mine!

NATALYA STEPANOVNA. It's not true, they're ours!

LOMOV. Mine!

NATALYA STEPANOVNA. It's not true! I'll prove it! I'll send my mowers
out to the Meadows this very day!

LOMOV. What?

NATALYA STEPANOVNA. My mowers will be there this very day!

LOMOV. I'll give it to them in the neck!

NATALYA STEPANOVNA. You dare!

LOMOV. [Clutches at his heart] Oxen Meadows are mine! You understand?
Mine!

NATALYA STEPANOVNA. Please don't shout! You can shout yourself hoarse in
your own house, but here I must ask you to restrain yourself!

LOMOV. If it wasn't, madam, for this awful, excruciating palpitation,
if my whole inside wasn't upset, I'd talk to you in a different way!
[Yells] Oxen Meadows are mine!

NATALYA STEPANOVNA. Ours!

LOMOV. Mine!

NATALYA STEPANOVNA. Ours!

LOMOV. Mine!

[Enter CHUBUKOV.]

CHUBUKOV. What's the matter? What are you shouting at?

NATALYA STEPANOVNA. Papa, please tell to this gentleman who owns Oxen
Meadows, we or he?

CHUBUKOV. [To LOMOV] Darling, the Meadows are ours!

LOMOV. But, please, Stepan Stepanitch, how can they be yours? Do be a
reasonable man! My aunt's grand