"You wait," answered the old woman, maliciously. "We shall see."
While I decorated the rafters of the attic with pink tea-wrappers, silver paper, leaves from trees, and all kinds of things, I used to sing anything that came into my head, setting the words to church melodies, as the Kalmucks do on the roads.
"I am sitting in the attic
With scissors in my hand,
Cutting paper—paper.
A dunce am I, and dull.
If I were a dog,
I could run where'er I wished;
But now they all cry out to me:
'Sit down! Be silent, rogue,
While your skin is whole!'"
The old woman came to look at my work, and burst out laughing.
"You should decorate the kitchen like that."
One day the master came up to the attic, looked at my performance, and said, with a sigh:
"You are an amusing fellow, Pyeshkov; the devil you are? I wonder what you will become, a conjurer or what? One can't guess." And he gave me a large Nikolaivski five-copeck piece.
By means of a thin wire I fastened the coin in the most prominent position among my works of art. In the course of a few days it disappeared. I believe that the old woman took it.