"We know all we want to know about Tushinkov, Dmitri Vassilich," said Petr indignantly, and Grigori said nothing, but let his head droop, and gazed into his glass. "I don't dispute it," replied Osip peaceably. "I was just telling our Maximich of the different pathways to the morsel--" "Some of the roads lead to prison!" "Occasionally," agreed Osip. "But you will meet with priests on all kinds of paths; one must learn where to turn off." He was always somewhat inclined to make fun of these pious people, the plasterer and the bricklayer; perhaps he did not like them, but he skilfully concealed the fact. His attitude towards people was always elusive. He looked upon Ephimushka more indulgently, with more favor than upon the other. The slater did not enter into discussions about God, the truth, sects, the woes of humanity, as his friends did. Setting his chair sidewise to the table, so that its back should not be in the way of his hump, he would calmly drink glass after glass of tea. Then, suddenly alert, he would glance round the smoky room, listening to the incoherent babel of voices, and darting up, swiftly disappear. That meant that some one had come into the tavern to whom Ephimushka owed money,--he had a good dozen creditors,--so, as some of them used to beat him when they saw him, he just fled from sin. "They get angry, the oddities!" he would say in a tone of surprise. "Can't they understand that if I had the money I would give it to them?" "Oh, bitter poverty!" Osip sped after him. Sometimes Ephimushka sat deep in thought, hearing and seeing nothing; his high cheek-boned face softened, his pleasant eyes looking pleasanter than usual. "What are you thinking about?" they would ask him. "I was thinking that if I were rich I would marry a real lady, a noblewoman--by God, I would! A colonel's daughter, for example, and, Lord! how I would love her! I should be on fire with love of her, because, my brothers, I once roofed the country house of a certain colonel--" "And he had a widowed daughter; we 've heard all that before!" interrupted Petr in an unfriendly tone. But Ephimushka, spreading his hands out on his knees, rocked to and fro, his hump looking as if it were chiselling the air, and continued: "Sometimes she went into the garden, all in white; glorious she looked. I looked at her from the roof, and I did n't know what the sun had done to me. But what caused that white light? It was as if a white dove had flown from under her feet! She was just a cornflower in cream! With such a lady as that, one would like all one's life to be night." "And how would you get anything to eat?" asked Petr gruffly. But this did not disturb Ephimushka. "Lord!" he exclaimed. "Should we want much? Besides, she is rich." Osip laughed. "And when are you going in for all this dissipation, Ephimushka, you rogue?"