"The schoolmaster is making up to old Tiapa; he is trying to get at his money."
"It's Kouvalda who has put him up to trying to find out where the old man's hoard is."
It is very possible that their words were not in agreement with their thoughts; for these people had one strange trait in common—they liked to appear to each other worse than they really were.
The man who has nothing good in him likes sometimes to show himself in the worst light.
When all of them were gathered round the schoolmaster with his newspaper, the reading would begin.
"Now," would say the captain, "what does the paper offer us to-day? Is there a serial story coming out in it?"
"No," the schoolmaster would reply.
"Your editor is mean. Is there a leading article?"
"Yes, there is one to-day. I think it is by Gouliaff."
"Give us a taste of it! The fellow writes well. He's a cute one, he is!"