What next? We engaged a second teacher, a Russian this time, not a Jew, preserve us, but a real Gentile, because grammar in the first class, let me tell you, is no trifle, no shredded horseradish! Gra-ma-ti-ke, indeed! The two e's! Well, I was telling about the teacher that God sent us for our sins. It's enough to make one blush to remember the way he treated us, as though we had been the mud under his feet. Laughed at us to our face, he did, devil take him, and the one and only thing he could teach him was: tshasnok, tshasnoka, tshasnoku, tshasnokom. If it hadn't been for _her_, I should have had him by the throat, and out into the street with his blessed grammar. But to _her_ it was all right and as it should be. Now the boy will know which e to put. If you'll believe me, they tormented him through that whole winter, for he was not to be had up for slaughter till about Pentecost. Pentecost over, he went up for examination, and this time he brought home no more two's, but a four and a five. There was great joy--we congratulate! we congratulate! Wait a bit, don't be in such a hurry with your congratulations! We don't know yet for certain whether he has got in or not. We shall not know till August. Why not till August? Why not before? Go and ask _them_. What is to be done? A Jew is used to that sort of thing. August--and I gave a glance out of the corner of my eye. She was up and doing! From the director to the inspector, from the inspector to the director! "Why are you running from Shmunin to Bunin," say I, "like a poisoned mouse?" "You asking why?" says she. "Aren't you a native of this place? You don't seem to know how it is nowadays with the Gymnasiyes and the percentages?" And what came of it? He did _not_ pass! You ask why? Because he hadn't two fives. If he had had two fives, then, they say, perhaps he would have got in. You hear--perhaps! How do you like that _perhaps_? Well, I'll let you off what I had to bear from her. As for him, the little boy, it was pitiful. Lay with his face in the cushion, and never stopped crying till we promised him another teacher. And we got him a student from the Gymnasiye itself, to prepare him for the second class, but after quite another fashion, because the second class is no joke. In the second, besides mathematics and grammar, they require geography, penmanship, and I couldn't for the life of me say what else. I should have thought a bit of the Maharsho was a more difficult thing than all their studies put together, and very likely had more sense in it, too. But what would you have? A Jew learns to put up with things.