"Ilya," cried Jakov convulsively, "my father thrashed me."
"That's so. I was a witness," explained Perfishka, and smote his breast with his fist. "I saw everything. I can take my oath! He knocked his teeth out, and made his nose bleed."
In fact, Jakov's face was swollen and his upper lip covered with blood. He stood in front of his comrade, and said, smiling mournfully:
"How dare he beat me? I'm nineteen, and I'd done nothing wrong."
"Why did he beat you, then?"
Jakov's lips twitched as though he was about to speak, but he said nothing. His bruised face quivered. He sank heavily on a chair, took his head in his hands, and began to sob aloud, so that his whole body shook. Perfishka, who had supported him as he sank down, poured out a glass of brandy, and said: "Let him cry. It's good when a man can. Mashutka, too, was in a state, quite bathed in tears. 'I'll scratch his eyes out,' she screamed right on, till I took her to Matiza."
"But what happened?"
"I can tell you exactly. It was quite a crazy business. Terenti, that uncle of yours, he began the thing. All at once he said to Petrusha, 'Let me go to Kiev,' he said, 'to the holy men!' Petrusha was delighted; that hump of Terenti's has worried his eyes, and to tell the truth, he's jolly glad to see Terenti's back; it's not nice to have some one about who knows a secret of yours—he! he! 'All right,' he says. 'Go along, and put in a little word for me too with the holy men.' And then Jakov starts in all of a sudden: 'Let me go too,' he says."
Perfishka began to roll his eyes, made a fierce grimace, and cried in a hoarse voice, imitating Petrusha:
"'Wha—a—at do you want to do?'"