"Couldn't you have saved a few more, you old' fool?"
"Make haste and eat them before any one sees you."
"I will tell how you steal cakes for me behind their backs."
Once I took out the vessel and ate two custards, for which Victor nearly killed me. He disliked me as heartily as I disliked him. He used to jeer at me and make me clean his boots about three times a day, and when I slept in the loft, he used to push up the trapdoor and spit in the crevice, trying to aim at my head.
It may be that in imitation of his brother, who often said "wild fowl," Victor also needed to use some catchwords, but his were all senseless and particularly absurd.
"Mamasha! Left wheel! where are my socks?"
And he used to follow me about with stupid questions.
"Alesha, answer me. Why do we write 'sinenki' and pronounce it 'phiniki'? Why do we say 'Kolokola' and not 'Okolokola'? Why do we say 'K'derevou' and not 'gdye plachou'?"
I did not like the way any of them spoke, and having been educated in the beautiful tongue which grandmother and grandfather spoke, I could not understand at first how words that had no sort of connection came to be coupled together, such as "terribly funny," "I am dying to eat," "awfully happy." It seemed to me that what was funny could not be terrible, that to be happy could not be awful, and that people did not die for something to eat.
"Can one say that?" I used to ask them; but they jeered at me: