"Well, and suppose I have; what then?" he answered, looking at me contemptuously.
I asked him to tell me how people took communion, what words the priest said, and what I ought to have done.
The young fellow shook me roughly and roared out in a terrifying voice:
"You have played the truant from communion, you heretic! Well, I am not going to tell you anything. Let your father skin you for it!"
I ran home expecting to be questioned, and certain that they would discover that I had not been to communion; but after congratulating me, the old woman asked only one question:
"How much did you give to the clerk? Much?"
"Five copecks," I answered, without turning a hair.
"And three copecks for himself; that would leave you seven copecks, animal!"
It was springtime. Each succeeding spring was clothed differently, and seemed brighter and pleasanter than the preceding one. The young grass and the fresh green birch gave forth an intoxicating odor. I had an uncontrollable desire to loiter in the fields and listen to the lark, lying face downward on the warm earth; but I had to clean the winter coats and help to put them away in the trunks, to cut up leaf tobacco, and dust the furniture, and to occupy myself from morning till night with duties which were to me both unpleasant and needless.
In my free hours I had absolutely nothing to live for. In our wretched street there was nothing, and beyond that I was not allowed to go. The yard was full of cross, tired workmen, untidy cooks, and washerwomen, and every evening I saw disgusting sights so offensive to me that I wished that I was blind.