"Grandfather," cried Terenti.
"Sh! Don't say anything! Besides you can let me have the boy, he hasn't anything to do here anyhow. He can help me, instead of interest on the money; he can pick me up a bone or a bit of rag. I shan't need to double up my old back so often."
"Ah! God bless you," cried the hunchback with a shaking voice.
"The Lord gives to me, I to you; you to the lad and the lad to the Lord again. So it goes round the circle, and no one of us owes anything to the others. Hey! Isn't that good? Eh? Ah! my brother. I have lived and lived and seen—seen, and have seen nothing but God. Everything is His, everything belongs to Him, everything comes from Him and is for Him!"
Ilya went to sleep while they talked. But next morning early, old Jeremy waked him with the joyful summons:
"Now then, up with you, Ilyusha, you're to come with me. So cheerily! cheerily! rub the sleep out of your peepers!"
[III.]
Ilya's daily work arranged itself fairly comfortably under the friendly hand of old Jeremy. Every morning he roused the boy early, and from then till late at night both tramped round the town and collected rags, bones, old paper, old iron, scraps of leather, and anything else of a similar kind. The town was large and there were many remarkable things to be seen in it, so that at first Ilya only half helped the old man, while he gazed constantly at the people and the houses, marvelled at everything, and questioned the grandfather unceasingly.
Jeremy was glad to chatter. With head bent forward and eyes searching the ground he passed from courtyard to courtyard, tapped the pavement with the iron ferule of his stick, wiped the tears from his eyes with his torn sleeve or the point of the dirty rag bag, and told all kinds of histories to his small companion, without ceasing, in a sing-song monotonous voice.