Before Yevsey appeared the gaunt red muzhik always half drunk, the sleeves of his dirty shirt tucked up, his right hand thrust in the breast of his apron, his left hand deliberately stroking his beard--Kuzin had a reddish forked beard. He was frowning and surly and moved slowly, like a heavy cart-load. Looking sidewise he screeched in a cracked, hoarse voice: "You are carrying on again, you heretic? Am I to listen to this nonsense for long? You blasted, confounded--" "Skinflint Raspopov!" announced Anatol. The smooth, sharp little figure of Yevsey's master crept past him moving his feet noiselessly. He worked his nose as if smelling something, nodded his head quickly, and kept tugging at the tuft on his chin with his little hand. In this characterization something loathsome, pitiful, and laughable became quite apparent to Yevsey, whose vexation rose. He felt sure his master was not such as the young glazier represented him to be. Next, Anatol took to mimicking members of the audience. Inexhaustible, stimulated by the applause, he tinkled until late at night like a little bell, evoking kindly, cheerful laughter. Sometimes the man who was touched would rush to catch him, and a noisy chase about the yard would ensue. Yevsey sighed. Anatol noticed him, and pulled him by the hand into the middle of the yard, where he introduced him to the audience. "Here he is--sugar and soap. Skinflint Raspopov's cousin morel." Turning the boy's little figure in all directions, he poured forth a flowing stream of strange comic words about his master, about Rayisa Petrovna, and about Yevsey himself. "Let me go!" Yevsey quietly demanded, trying to tear his hand from Anatol's strong grip, in the meantime listening attentively in the endeavor to understand the hints, the filth of which he felt. Whenever Yevsey struggled hard to tear himself away, the audience, usually the women, said lazily to Anatol: "Let him go." For some reason their intercession was disagreeable to Yevsey. It exasperated Anatol, too, who began to push and pinch his victim and challenge him to a fight. Some of the men urged the boys on. "Well--fight! See which will do the other up." The women objected: "A fight! Thanks, we're not interested. Don't." Yevsey again felt something unpleasant in these words. Finally Anatol scornfully pushed Yevsey aside. "Oh, you kid!" The next morning Yevsey met Anatol outside the house carrying his box of glass, and suddenly, without desiring to do it, he said to him: "Why do you make fun of me?" The glazier boy looked at him. "What of it?" Yevsey was unable to reply. "Do you want to fight?" asked Anatol again. "Come to our shed. I will wait for you until evening." He spoke calmly and in a business-like way. "No, I don't want to fight," replied Yevsey quietly. "Then you needn't! I'd lick you anyway," said the glazier, and added with assurance, "I certainly would."