"Pull yourself together, Andriusha."
"Wait a little, my dear mother, my own!" he begged softly and kindly. "All this is so ugly—although I didn't mean to do any harm. Wait!" And suddenly rousing himself, he said, striking the table with his hand: "Yes, Pavel, the peasant will lay the land bare for himself when he rises to his feet. He will burn everything up, as if after a plague, so that all traces of his wrongs will vanish in ashes."
"And then he will get in our way," Pavel observed softly.
"It's our business to prevent that. We are nearer to him; he trusts us; he will follow us."
"Do you know, Rybin proposes that we should publish a newspaper for the village?"
"We must do it, too. As soon as possible."
Pavel laughed and said:
"I feel bad I didn't argue with him."
"We'll have a chance to argue with him still," the Little Russian rejoined. "You keep on playing your flute; whoever has gay feet, if they haven't grown into the ground, will dance to your tune. Rybin would probably have said that we don't feel the ground under us, and need not, either. Therefore it's our business to shake it. Shake it once, and the people will be loosened from it; shake it once more, and they'll tear themselves away."
The mother smiled.