‘Where?’ he questioned, and he put his hand up to the collar to feel. ‘Ah, the tassel? Let it be! I suppose it was sewn there for ornament! It’s not in the way.’
I led him to the seat, and sat down; he settled himself beside me. ‘It’s lovely here!’ he commented, and he drew a deep, deep sigh. ‘Oh, how lovely! You have a most splendid garden! Oh, o—oh!’
I looked at him from one side. ‘What a queer cap you’ve got!’ I couldn’t help exclaiming. ‘Show it me here!’
‘By all means, little master, by all means.’ He took off the cap; I was holding out my hand, but I raised my eyes, and—simply burst out laughing. Punin was completely bald; not a single hair was to be seen on the high conical skull, covered with smooth white skin. He passed his open hand over it, and he too laughed. When he laughed he seemed, as it were, to gulp, he opened his mouth wide, closed his eyes—and vertical wrinkles flitted across his forehead in three rows, like waves. ‘Eh,’ said he at last, ‘isn’t it quite like an egg?’
‘Yes, yes, exactly like an egg!’ I agreed with enthusiasm. ‘And have you been like that long?’
‘Yes, a long while; but what hair I used to have!—A golden fleece like that for which the Argonauts sailed over the watery deeps.’
Though I was only twelve, yet, thanks to my mythological studies, I knew who the Argonauts were; I was the more surprised at hearing the name on the lips of a man dressed almost in rags.
‘You must have learned mythology, then?’ I queried, as I twisted his cap over and over in my hands. It turned out to be wadded, with a mangy-looking fur trimming, and a broken cardboard peak.
‘I have studied that subject, my dear little master; I’ve had time enough for everything in my life! But now restore to me my covering, it is a protection to the nakedness of my head.’
He put on the cap, and, with a downward slope of his whitish eyebrows, asked me who I was, and who were my parents.