And before we could hold him, he had disappeared round the street comer.
"There's a soft-boned fool for you. You dirty insect, you!" cried Semka in indignation, taking in the meaning of the occurrence and its possible consequences. And swearing for all he was worth, he began persuading me.
"Come on, hurry up! He'll do us. He's sitting there now, as like as not, with his hands tied behind him, and the old hag's sent for the policeman already. That's what philandering round with a ninny like that means. Why, he'll get you into jail for nothing at all. What a scoundrel! What foul-souled thing would treat his mate like this? Good Lord! That's what people have come to! Come on, you devil, what are you standing there for? Waiting? The devil wait for you and take you all, the scoundrels. Pah, you damned asses! Not coming? All right, then"—
Promising me something extraordinarily dreadful, Semka gave me a despairing poke in the ribs, and went off with rapid strides.
I wanted to know what was happening to Mishka and the old lady, and walked quietly towards her house. I did not think that I would incur any danger or unpleasantness.
And I was not mistaken.
Approaching the house, I looked through a chink in the board fence, and saw and heard the following:—
The old lady sat on the steps holding the clasps of her Bible, "torn out with the stuff," in her hand, and looked searchingly and sternly through her spectacles at Mishka's face, who stood with his back to me.
Notwithstanding the stern, hard gleam in her hard eyes, there were soft lines at the corners of her mouth now; it was clear that the old lady wanted to conceal a kindly smile—the smile of forgiveness.
From behind her back protruded three heads—two women's—one red-faced, and tied up in a many-coloured handkerchief, the other uncovered, with a cataract in the left eye; over her shoulders appeared a man's face—wedge-shaped, with little grey side-whiskers and a crest of hair on the top. This face incessantly blinked and winked in a curious manner with both eyes, as if saying to Mishka—