Then the old man would look anxiously all round him and say in a warning whisper:
"But don't shout so—don't shout for any sake!"
He was always anxious if they made any unusual discovery, and would take it quickly out of Ilya's hands and conceal it in the big sack.
"Ha! Ha! I've hooked another big fish!" Ilya would cry, delighted with his success.
"Be quiet, youngster! Quiet, my boy," the old man would say in a friendly tone, while the tears ran and ran from his red swollen eyes.
"But look grandfather," Ilya would break out again, "what a tremendous big bone!"
Bones and rags did not excite the old man. He took them from the bag, wiped off the dirt with wood shavings and stuffed them quietly into the sack. He had sewed for Ilya a little sack and given him a stick with an iron point, and the youngster was not a little proud of this equipment. In his sack he collected all kinds of small boxes, broken toys, pretty potsherds, and it filled him with joy to feel all these things in the bag on his back, and to hear how they rattled and rustled. Old Jeremy made it the lad's business to collect all these trifles.
"Do you collect just these pretty things and carry them home. You can share them with the children and make them happy. God is pleased when a man makes his brothers happy. Ah! my son, all men long for happiness, and yet there is so little. So very little in all the world. So little that many a man never meets happiness all his life, never."
Ilya preferred rummaging in the town refuse heaps to pottering about courtyards. There in the open space, there was nobody except two or three old people like Jeremy who searched the rubbish as he did. In the courtyard, on the contrary, there was need of constant anxious attention, lest a house servant should come out, broom in hand, and chase them away with angry words, or even with blows. Every day Jeremy said to his companion when they had searched for about two hours:
"That's enough just now, Ilya, that's enough, laddie! We'll sit down a while and rest, and have a bit to eat."