To his astonishment Yevsey saw the little stout furrier with hanging lower lip and eyes painfully screwed up. Thrusting out his abdomen and leaning his head to one side, Anatol struggled toward the gate in short steps, reluctance depicted in his walk. The people sitting around laughed and shouted approval.
"Zvorykin returning from the saloon!"
Now Anatol swayed through the yard, his feet dragging along feebly, his arms hanging limp, a dull look in his wide-open eyes, his mouth gaping hideously yet comically. He stopped, tapped himself on the chest, and said in a wheezy pitiful voice:
"God—how satisfied I am with everything and everybody! Lord, how good and pleasant everything is to Thy servant, Yakov Ivanich. But the glazier Kuzin is a blackguard—a scamp before God, a jackass before all the people—that's true, God—"
The audience roared, but Yevsey did not laugh. He was oppressed by a twofold feeling of astonishment and envy. The desire to see this boy frightened and wronged mingled with the expectation of new pranks. He felt vexed and unpleasant because the glazier boy did not show up men who inflicted hurt, but merely funny men. Yevsey sat there with mouth agape and a stupid expression on his face, his owlish eyes staring.
"Here goes glazier Kuzin!"
Before Yevsey appeared the gaunt red muzhik always half drunk, the sleeves of his dirty shirt tucked up, his right hand thrust in the breast of his apron, his left hand deliberately stroking his beard—Kuzin had a reddish forked beard. He was frowning and surly and moved slowly, like a heavy cart-load. Looking sidewise he screeched in a cracked, hoarse voice:
"You are carrying on again, you heretic? Am I to listen to this nonsense for long? You blasted, confounded—"
"Skinflint Raspopov!" announced Anatol.
The smooth, sharp little figure of Yevsey's master crept past him moving his feet noiselessly. He worked his nose as if smelling something, nodded his head quickly, and kept tugging at the tuft on his chin with his little hand. In this characterization something loathsome, pitiful, and laughable became quite apparent to Yevsey, whose vexation rose. He felt sure his master was not such as the young glazier represented him to be.