Or he would stare up into the sky and say suddenly:
"Ah! the sun."
"Well—what?" asked Ilya.
"How it blazes away!"
"Well, what then?"
"Oh nothing. D'you know what I was thinking? The sun and moon must be parents and the stars are their children."
At first Ilya pondered deeply over his odd sayings, but by degrees these fancies began to worry him, because they took his mind off the things that were happening close to him. And there were many things happening, and the boy had soon learnt to take good heed of them.
One day he came home from school and said with scorn to old Jeremy:
"Our teacher—ah!—he's a good one! Yesterday the son of Malafyeyev the merchant, smashed a window, and he let him off very easy, and to-day he's had the window mended and paid for it out of his own pocket."
"But see then, how good he is!" answered Jeremy.