Grandfather Jeremy kept his word; he bought Ilya a pair of boots, a thick heavy coat and a cap, and thus equipped, the youngster was sent to school. Full at once of curiosity and anxiety he went, and gloomy and sick, with tears in his eyes he came home. The boys had recognised him as old Jeremy's companion and had jeered at him in chorus:
"Rag-picker! Stinking rag-picker!"
Some pinched him, others put their tongues out at him, and one specially impudent boy went up to him, sniffed the air, and shouted, turning away with a grimace of disgust:
"Ah! how beastly the lout smells!"
"Why do they laugh at me?" Ilya asked his uncle, full of wrath and doubt. "Is there any shame in being a rag-picker?"
"No! No!" answered Terenti, stroking his nephew's hair, and trying to hide his face from the boy's inquiring eyes. "They only do it—oh just—because they're ill-mannered. Don't worry! Try to bear it! They'll soon have enough of it, and you'll get used to it."
"But they laugh at my boots, too, and my overcoat; they said they were odds and ends dug out of a rubbish heap!"
Grandfather Jeremy comforted him, blinking in a friendly way.
"Bear it, dear lad! There's One will soon make it up to you: He! There's no one else that matters."
The old man spoke of God with such joy, such confidence in his justice, as though he knew well all the mind of God, and was initiated into all His intentions. And Jeremy's words relieved a little the boy's feeling of heart-sickness. But the next day the feeling rose up in him stronger than ever. Ilya had become accustomed to regard himself as a person of importance, a real workman. Why, Savel the smith spoke in a friendly way with him, and these school-boys laughed and mocked at him. He could get no peace, no respite. Every day the bitter insulting expressions of the school became more marked, and drove deeper into his soul. The school hours were for him a heavy, burdensome duty. He kept himself apart, held no intercourse with the others. Through his quickness of comprehension he attracted the attention of the teacher, and being held up as an example to the others, his relations with his schoolfellows became, if possible, more strained than before. He sat on the front bench, and never lost the sense of his enemies at his back. They had him constantly before their eyes, and readily discovered anything about him that might appear ridiculous. And they laughed at him all the time. Jakov attended the same school and was at once tarred with the same brush as his comrade. They usually called him "Muttonhead." He was absent-minded, learnt with difficulty, and was punished almost every day, but remained absolutely indifferent to all punishments. Mostly he seemed hardly to notice what went on round about him, and lived in a world of his own, at school as at home. He had his own thoughts, and by his odd questions moved Ilya to astonishment nearly every day. For instance, he would say, casually, gazing meditatively before him, "Tell me, Ilya, how is it that such little eyes as men have can see everything? One can see the whole street, the whole town; how can anything so big get into our little eyes?"