A fire seemed to be ever burning in his broad chest, unsteady as yet, not confident in its own power. It flashed brightly in his eyes, forced out from within; but suddenly it would nearly expire in fright and flicker behind the smoke of perplexed alarm and embarrassment.
The mother rose from behind the table, and looking through the window reflected:
"Ah, life! Five times in the day you laugh and five times you weep. All right. Well, are you through, Ignaty? Go to bed and sleep."
"But I don't want to."
"You're stern in this place. Thank you for the tea, for the sugar, for the kindness."
Lying down in the mother's bed he mumbled, scratching his head:
"Now everything'll smell of tar in your place. Ah, it's all for nothing all this—plain coddling! I don't want to sleep. You're good people, yes. It's more than I can understand—as if I'd gotten a hundred thousand miles away from the village—how he hit it off about the middle—and in the middle are the people who lick the hands—of those who beat the faces—um, yes."
And suddenly he gave a loud short snore and dropped off to sleep, with eyebrows raised high and half-open mouth.