He took me by the arm and drew me to him, and, tapping my forehead with his cold fingers, drawled: "What are you thinking of, with your 'take this' and 'take that'?" "You asked me for them yourself." "I might ask you to do lots of things. I might ask you to come and rob the church. Would you do it? Do you think you can trust everybody? Ah, you young fool!" He pushed me away from him and stood up. "I don't want stolen goloshes. I am not a gentleman, and I don't wear goloshes. I was only making fun of you. For your simplicity, when Easter comes, I will let you come up into the belfry and ring the bells and look at the town." "I know the town." "It looks better from the belfry." Dragging his broken boots in the snow, he went slowly round the corner of the church, and I looked after him, wondering dejectedly and fearfully whether the old man had really been making fun of me, or had been sent by my master to try me. I did not want to go back to the shop. Sascha came hurriedly into the yard and shouted: "What the devil has become of you?" I shook my pincers at him in a sudden access of rage. I knew that both he and the assistant robbed the master. They would hide a pair of boots or slippers in the stovepipe, and when they left the shop, would slip them into the sleeves of their overcoats. I did not like this, and felt alarmed about it, for I remembered the threats of the master. "Are you stealing?" I had asked Sascha. "Not I, but the assistant," he would explain crossly. "I am only helping him. He says, 'Do as I tell you,' and I have to obey. If I did not, he would do me some mischief. As for master, he was an assistant himself once, and he understands. But you hold your tongue." As he spoke, he looked in the glass and set his tie straight with just such a movement of his naturally spreading fingers as the senior assistant employed. He was unwearying in his demonstrations of his seniority and power over me, scolding me in a bass voice, and ordering me about with threatening gestures. I was taller than he, but bony and clumsy, while he was compact, flexible, and fleshy. In his frock-coat and long trousers he seemed an important and substantial figure in my eyes, and yet there was something ludicrous and unpleasing about him. He hated the cook, a curious woman, of whom it was impossible to decide whether she was good or bad. "What I love most in the world is a fight," she said, opening wide her burning black eyes. "I don't care what sort of fight it is, cock-fights, dog-fights, or fights between men. It is all the same to me." And if she saw cocks or pigeons fighting in the yard, she would throw aside her work and watch the fight to the end, standing dumb and motionless at the window. In the evenings she would say to me and Sascha: "Why do you sit there doing nothing, children? You had far better be fighting." This used to make Sascha angry. "I am not a child, you fool; I am junior assistant."