This reminder of his father vexed him. "What about my father?" he exclaimed roughly. "My father indeed! I'm not a boy! ... What are you talking about?... We are not in a convent here.... I'm not blind.... And he's not such a saint, after all; and he doesn't deny himself anything.... He'd better leave me alone." She watched him mockingly, and asked him with curiosity-- "Leave you alone?... What are you thinking of doing then?" "I?" (He puffed out his cheeks, and distended his chest, as if he were about to lift a weight). "I have plenty of ideas in my head; I have shaken the dust of the village off my feet." "It hasn't taken long to do that!" cried Malva, still mockingly. "I'll get you away from my father!... you'll see if I don't!" "Will you indeed?" "You think that I daren't?" "You don't say so?" "Look here!" he began in an excited, furious voice. "Don't dare me to do it! I ..." "What again?" she asked indifferently. "Oh! never mind!" Then he turned away with the look of a smart, resolute boy. "How plucky you are! The inspector has a little black dog, have you seen it? it's like you. When he is far away, he barks, and threatens to bite, but when one goes near him, he puts his tail between his legs and runs away!" "All right!" cried Jakoff in a rage. "Just wait a minute, and you'll see what I'll do!" She laughed up into his face. There came towards them with a slow, loitering step a young bronzed-face fellow, with well-strung muscles, and an abundant thatch of bright red hair. His red shirt, hanging loose, was tom at the back nearly to the neck, and in order to keep his sleeves in place he had rolled them up above the elbow. His trousers were a mass of holes, he was barefooted. His freckled face was lighted up by a pair of blue eyes, wide open and impertinent; and a big turned-up nose gave to his whole face a look of cheekiness, not to say arrogance. When he had joined the couple, he stopped, whilst his whole body, which seemed apparent everywhere through his elementary costume, shone in the sunlight, he sneezed loudly, contemplated them a few moments, and then made a quaint grimace. "Yesterday Sereja was drinking, and to-day Sereja's pocket is empty.... Lend me twenty kopecks! I shall not return them." Jakoff gasped as he listened to this rapidly delivered speech; Malva smiled as she examined the tatterdemalion. "Damn it all I give them to me! I will marry you for twenty kopecks, if you like?" "You scarecrow! Are you a pope?" "Fool! At Ouglitch I was servant to a pope.... Give me twenty kopecks." "I don't want to get married," said Jakoff. "Never mind; give all the same. I won't tell your father that you are running after his girl," continued Sereja, licking his dry, cracked lips. "Do you think, that he'd believe you?" "When I take the trouble to talk, I am generally believed," asserted Sereja. "And you'd catch it from him!" "I'm not afraid!" said Jakoff.