“Why do you laugh at the child?” calls Pelagia Ivanovna from the next room. “Show him how to do his lessons, instead of making fun of him! Oh, what a trial he is! He’ll be sure to get a bad mark to-morrow!”
“What is it you don’t understand?” asked Pavel Vasilitch of Stepa.
“This here, how to divide these fractions,” the boy answered crossly. “The division of fractions by fractions.”
“H’m, you little pickle, that’s easy, there’s nothing about it to understand. You must do the sum right, that’s all. To divide one fraction by another you multiply the numerator of the first by the denominator of the second in order to get the numerator of the quotient. Very well. Now the denominator of the first——”
“I know that already!” Stepa interrupted him, flicking a nutshell off the table. “Show me an example.”
“An example? Very well, let me have a pencil. Now, then, listen to me. Supposing that we want to divide seven-eighths by two-fifths. Very well, then the proposition is this: we want to divide these two fractions by one another—Is the samovar boiling?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because it’s eight o’clock and time for tea. Very well, now listen to me. Supposing that we divide seven-eighths not by two-fifths, but by two, that is by the numerator only. What is the answer?”
“Seven-sixteenths.”
“Splendid! Good boy! Now, then, sonny, the trick is this: as we have divided—let me see—as we have divided it by two, of course—wait a minute, I’m getting muddled myself. I remember when I was a boy at school we had a Polish arithmetic master named Sigismund Urbanitch, who used to get muddled over every lesson. He would suddenly lose his wits while he was in the midst of demonstrating a proposition, blush to the roots of his hair, and rush about the classroom as if the devil were after him. Then he would blow his nose four or five times and burst into tears. But we were generous to him, we used to pretend not to notice it, and would ask him whether he had the toothache. And yet we were a class of pirates, of cutthroats, I can tell you, but, as you see, we were generous. We boys weren’t puny like you when I was a youngster; we were great big chaps, you never saw such great strapping fellows! There was Mamakin, for instance, in the third grade. Lord! What a giant he was! Why, that colossus was seven feet high! The whole house shook when he walked across the floor and he would knock the breath out of your body if he laid his hand on your shoulder. Not only we boys, but even the masters feared him. Why Mamakin would sometimes——”