Ilya answered decidedly and with conviction: "I'm fifteen years old. I can read and write. I'm not stupid, and if I'm insolent they'll only send me away from any other place I get. Who can do with an insolent man?" "But then, what shall we do?" asked Terenti, anxiously, sitting on his bed and supporting himself on it with his hands. "I'll tell you. Let me have a big box and buy me some goods--soap and scent, needles and books, all sorts of small things, and I'll go round about with them and do business for myself." "What?--What do you mean, Ilusha? I don't quite understand. In the bar room here, in the noise, it always goes tchk!--tchk! tchk! So that my head's got weak, and then there's something never lets me alone, always the same thing, I can't think of anything else!" A strange tortured expression showed in the hunchback's eyes, as though he wanted to reckon up something and could not get it right. "Try it, uncle; let me go once any way." Ilya entreated, excited by his idea which promised him freedom. "Well, God help us! we might try." "Ah! splendid! you'll see how it'll go," cried Ilya delighted. "Oh dear!" Terenti sighed deeply, and went on sorrowfully: "If only you were quite grown up! Ah! then I could go away, but now you're just an anchor to hold me, it's only for your sake I stay in this beastly hole, and go down, down. I might go to some holy men and say: 'Servants of God! doers of good! interceders! I have sinned, accursed that I am, my heart is heavy, save me, pray for pardon for me to my Father!'" And the hunchback began to weep quietly. Ilya knew well what sin oppressed his uncle and remembered it clearly. His heart was uplifted; he pitied, but could find no words of consolation and was silent, till he saw the tears flow from the sunken, introspective eyes of his uncle, then he said: "There--there, don't cry any more! See! Wait till I get on a bit in business, then you can get away from here." After a moment's silence he resumed consolingly, "There--you'll see, you'll be forgiven." "Do you think so really?" asked Terenti softly, and the lad repeated in a tone of conviction: "Of course you'll be forgiven, worse things than that have been pardoned, I'm sure of it." So it came about that Ilya took to the pedlar's trade. From morning to night he traversed the streets, with his box at his breast, while his black eyebrows contracted, and he looked out on the world full of self-confidence with his nose in the air. With his cap drawn down on his forehead, he held up his head and cried with his boyish voice beginning to break: "Soap! blacking! pomade! hairpins! needles and thread, pins! books--beautiful books!"