“Oh yes,” Seryozha recollected, and his eyes smiled. “That’s true, that’s true; I smoked twice: to-day and before.”
“So you see it was not once, but twice. . . . I am very, very much displeased with you! You used to be a good boy, but now I see you are spoilt and have become a bad one.”
Yevgeny Petrovitch smoothed down Seryozha’s collar and thought:
“What more am I to say to him!”
“Yes, it’s not right,” he continued. “I did not expect it of you. In the first place, you ought not to take tobacco that does not belong to you. Every person has only the right to make use of his own property; if he takes anyone else’s . . . he is a bad man!” (“I am not saying the right thing!” thought Yevgeny Petrovitch.) “For instance, Natalya Semyonovna has a box with her clothes in it. That’s her box, and we—that is, you and I—dare not touch it, as it is not ours. That’s right, isn’t it? You’ve got toy horses and pictures. . . . I don’t take them, do I? Perhaps I might like to take them, but . . . they are not mine, but yours!”
“Take them if you like!” said Seryozha, raising his eyebrows. “Please don’t hesitate, papa, take them! That yellow dog on your table is mine, but I don’t mind. . . . Let it stay.”
“You don’t understand me,” said Bykovsky. “You have given me the dog, it is mine now and I can do what I like with it; but I didn’t give you the tobacco! The tobacco is mine.” (“I am not explaining properly!” thought the prosecutor. “It’s wrong! Quite wrong!”) “If I want to smoke someone else’s tobacco, I must first of all ask his permission. . . .”
Languidly linking one phrase on to another and imitating the language of the nursery, Bykovsky tried to explain to his son the meaning of property. Seryozha gazed at his chest and listened attentively (he liked talking to his father in the evening), then he leaned his elbow on the edge of the table and began screwing up his short-sighted eyes at the papers and the inkstand. His eyes strayed over the table and rested on the gum-bottle.
“Papa, what is gum made of?” he asked suddenly, putting the bottle to his eyes.
Bykovsky took the bottle out of his hands and set it in its place and went on: