"But Perfishka won't let you."
"Then I'll run away," answered Pashka, shortly and decidedly.
And as a matter of fact soon after this speech the cobbler went round the courtyard saying with a laugh:
"My young companion has run away, the young devil! Couldn't get on with my leather science!"
It was a rainy day. Ilya looked at the worried cobbler and then at the dull grey skies, and felt pity for the froward Pashka who might now be wandering God knows where. He stood by Perfishka under a shed, leant against the wall and looked across at the house. It seemed to him that day by day it became lower, as though it were sinking into the earth under the burden of the years. Its old ribs stood out more and more sharply, as though the dirt that had accumulated within them for years could no longer find room, and were pushing them asunder. Saturated with misery, wild riot and mournful drunken songs its only abundance, pounded and bruised by never-ceasing footsteps, the house could no longer endure its life, and slowly crumbled to decay, while its dim windows stared mournfully upon God's world.
"Heigh-ho!" began the cobbler, "the old shop'll soon smash up and strew its spawn over the earth, and we that live in it, we'll scatter to the four winds, we'll seek out new holes somewhere else—we'll soon find 'em, as good as these. Then we'll begin a new life—new windows and new doors, and new bugs to bite us. Well, let's have it soon, I've had enough of this pig-sty—only in the end one gets used to it, devil take it!"
But the shoemaker's dream was not to be fulfilled. The house did not crumble down, but was bought by Petrusha. As soon as the sale was complete, Petrusha spent two days creeping into every hole and corner, and feeling and testing the old box of rubbish. Then came bricks and boards, scaffolding surrounded the whole house, and for three months on end it creaked and quivered under the blows of the workmen's hatchets. All round there was sawing and chopping, nails were driven in, old beams torn out with loud crackings and whirls of dust, and new ones put in the places, till at last the old shanty had received a new clothing of planks, and its façade was widened by a new outbuilding. Broad and thickset, the house rose now from the ground straight and sturdy, as though it had driven new roots far into the earth; along its front just below the roof, Petrusha had a big hanging sign put up, which bore the statement in golden letters on a blue ground:
"The Jolly Companions Tavern, P. S. Filimonov."
"And inside it's rotten through and through," said Perfishka mockingly.
Ilya, to whom he made this comment, smiled in sympathy. To him, too, this house, after its rebuilding, seemed a gigantic fraud. He remembered Pashka, who must now be living in another place, and seeing quite different things.