"Yes." The next instant Yevsey thought, "I said it too soon."
"What?"
"Clerk in a printing office."
Yakov whistled.
"Capital! What do you get?"
"Twenty-five."
"In a printing office? Indeed!" said Yakov thoughtfully, then suddenly became animated. "What do you say—I'll take you to pay a visit this evening. Good company, coz. Two girls, one a milliner, the other a spool girl in a thread factory. There'll be a locksmith there, too, a young fellow. He sings and plays the guitar. Two more, also good people. All people are good, only they have no time to pay attention to themselves."
Yakov spoke quickly, and his eyes smiled joyously at everything he saw. He stopped in front of the shop-windows, and examined their contents with the gaze of a man to whom all articles are pleasant, and everything is interesting.
"Look, what a dress! Ha! If you were to put such a thing on our Olya, she'd get tangled up in it. Books—that little one there, yellow, you see it? I've read it. 'Primitive Man.' Interesting. Read it, and you'll see how people grew up. Books are very interesting. They at once open up to you all the cunning of life. Those thick books are awkward to read. By the time you get to the middle you forget what happened at the beginning, and at the end you forget the beginning also. The devil take them! Why don't they write shorter books?"
The next minute he pointed out a gun, and cried ecstatically: