"Look here, my boy; why this close friendship with the folk of Millioni Street? Take care you don't do yourself harm by it."
I told him as well as I could how I liked these people who lived so gaily, without working.
"Birds of the air they are!" he interrupted me, laughing. "That's what they are—idle, useless people; and work is a calamity to them!"
"What is work, after all? As they say, the labors of the righteous don't procure them stone houses to live in!"
I said this glibly enough. I had heard the proverb so often, and felt the truth of it.
But Osip was very angry with me, and cried:
"Who says so? Fools, idlers! And you are a youngster; you ought not to listen to such things! Oh, you—! That is the nonsense which is uttered by the envious, the unsuccessful. Wait till your feathers are grown; then you can fly! And I shall tell your master about this friendship of yours."
And he did tell. The master spoke to me about the matter.
"You leave the Millioni folk alone, Pyeshkov! They are thieves and prostitutes, and from there the path leads to the prison and the hospital. Let them alone!"
I began to conceal my visits to Millioni Street, but I soon had to give them up. One day I was sitting with Ardalon and his comrade, Robenok, on the roof of a shed in the yard of one of the lodging-houses. Robenok was relating to us amusingly how he had made his way on foot from Rostov, on the Don, to Moscow. He had been a soldier-sapper, a Geogrivsky horseman, and he was lame. In the war with Turkey he had been wounded in the knee. Of low stature, he had a terrible strength in his arms, a strength which was of no profit to him, for his lameness prevented him from working. He had had an illness which had caused the hair to fall from his head and face; his head was like that of a new-born infant.