However, I did run away in the spring. One morning when I went to the shop for bread the shopkeeper, continuing in my presence a quarrel with his wife, struck her on the forehead with a weight. She ran into the street, and there fell down. People began to gather round at once. The woman was laid on a stretcher and carried to the hospital, and I ran behind the cab which took her there without noticing where I was going till I found myself on the banks of the Volga, with two _grevens_ in my hand. The spring sun shone caressingly, the broad expanse of the Volga flowed before me, the earth was full of sound and spacious, and I had been living like a mouse in a trap. So I made up my mind that I would not return to my master, nor would I go to grandmother at Kunavin; for as I had not kept my word to her, I was ashamed to go and see her, and grandfather would only gloat over my misfortunes. For two or three days I wandered by the river-side, being fed by kind-hearted porters, and sleeping with them in their shelters. At length one of them said to me: "It is no use for you to hang about here, my boy. I can see that. Go over to the boat which is called _The Good._ They want a washer-up." I went. The tall, bearded steward in a black silk skullcap looked at me through his glasses with his dim eyes, and said quietly: "Two rubles a month. Your passport?" I had no passport. The steward pondered and then said: "Bring your mother to see me." I rushed to grandmother. She approved the course I had taken, told grandfather to go to the workman's court and get me a passport, and she herself accompanied me to the boat. "Good!" said the steward, looking at us. "Come along." He then took me to the stern of the boat, where sat at a small table, drinking tea and smoking a fat cigar at the same time, an enormous cook in white overalls and a white cap. The steward pushed me toward him. "The washer-up." Then he went away, and the cook, snorting, and with his black mustache bristling, called after him: "You engage any sort of devil as long as he is cheap." Angrily tossing his head of closely cropped hair, he opened his dark eyes very wide, stretched himself, puffed, and cried shrilly: "And who may you be?" I did not like the appearance of this man at all. Although he was all in white, he looked dirty. There was a sort of wool growing on his fingers, and hairs stuck out of his great ears. "I am hungry," was my reply to him. He blinked, and suddenly his ferocious countenance was transformed by a broad smile. His fat, brick-red cheeks widened to his very ears; he displayed his large, equine teeth; his mustache drooped, and all at once he had assumed the appearance of a kind, fat woman. Throwing the tea overboard out of his glass, he poured out a fresh lot for me, and pushed a French roll and a large piece of sausage toward me. "Peg away! Are your parents living? Can you steal? You needn't be afraid; they are all thieves here. You will soon learn."