“But what could he do? It came to his mind.”
“How can one allow himself to sell a human being?”
“Ah! It is brutal, I agree with you.”
“And a girl at that! I would have given him the ten roubles!”
The receiver waved his hand hopelessly and became silent. His gesture confused Foma. He arose from his seat, walked off to the railing and looked down at the deck of the barge, which was covered with an industriously working crowd of people. The noise intoxicated him, and the uneasy something, which was rambling in his soul, was now defined into a powerful desire to work, to have the strength of a giant, to possess enormous shoulders and put on them at one time a hundred bags of rye, that every one looking at him might be astonished.
“Come now, hurry up there!” he shouted down in a ringing voice. A few heads were raised to him, some faces appeared before him, and one of them—the face of a dark-eyed woman—smiled at him a gentle and enticing smile. Something flared up in his breast at this smile and began to spread over his veins in a hot wave. He drew back from the railing and walked up to the table again, feeling that his cheeks were burning.
“Listen!” said the receiver, addressing him, “wire to your father asking him to allow some grain for waste! Just see how much is lost here. And here every pound is precious! You should have understood this! What a fine father you have,” he concluded with a biting grimace.
“How much shall I allow?” asked Foma, boldly and disdainfully. “Do you want a hundred puds? [A pud is a weight of 40 Russian pounds.] Two hundred?”
“I—I thank you!” exclaimed the receiver, overjoyed and confused, “if you have the right to do it.”
“I am the master!” said Foma, firmly. “And you must not speak that way about my father—nor make such faces.”