"What harm?"
"That I can't say!" answered the handsome workman, blinking.
I did not understand him in the least. I thought that the most honest and pious man of them all was the bricklayer, Petr; He spoke of everything briefly, suggestively; his thoughts rested mostly upon God, hell, and death.
"Ekh! my children, my brothers, how can you not be afraid? How can you not look forward, when the grave and the churchyard let no one pass them?"
He always had the stomachache, and there were some days when he could not eat anything at all. Even a morsel of bread brought on the pain to such an extent as to cause convulsions and a dreadful sickness.
Humpbacked Ephimushka also seemed a very good and honest, but always queer fellow. Sometimes he was happy and foolish, like a harmless lunatic. He was everlastingly falling in love with different women, about whom he always used the same words:
"I tell you straight, she is not a woman, but a flower in cream—ei, bo—o!"
When the lively women of Kunavin Street came to wash the floors in the shops, Ephimushka let himself down from the roof, and standing in a corner somewhere, mumbled, blinking his gray, bright eyes, stretching his mouth from ear to ear:
"Such a butterfly as the Lord has sent to me; such a joy has descended upon me! Well, what is she but a flower in cream, and grateful I ought to be for the chance which has brought me such a gift! Such beauty makes me full of life, afire!"
At first the women used to laugh at him, calling out to each other: