"And clean."
"Only he is very impudent."
"Well, Mother, who has educated him?"
They both tried to educate me to respect them, but I regarded them as half witted. I did not like them; I would not obey them, and I used to answer them back. The young mistress must have noticed what a bad effect their speeches had upon me, for she said with increasing frequency:
"You ought to remember from what a poor family you have been taken. I gave your mother a silk cloak trimmed with jet."
One day I said to her:
"Do you want me to skin myself to pay for the cloak?"
"Good gracious!" she cried in a tone of alarm, "this boy is capable of setting fire to the place!"
I was extremely surprised. Why did she say that? They both complained to the master about me on this occasion, and he said to me sternly:
"Now, my boy, you had better look out." But one day he said coolly to his wife and his mother: "You are a nice pair! You ride the boy as if he were a gelding! Any other boy would have run away long ago if you had not worked him to death first."