On holy days they sent him to church. He came back always with the sense that his heart had been washed clean in the sweet-smelling, warm stream that flowed through the house of God. In half a year he was only able to visit his uncle twice. There, all went on as of old. The hunchback grew thinner and Petrusha whistled louder, and his face once rosy, was now red. Jakov complained that his father treated him harshly: "He's always growling that I must begin to be reasonable, that he can't stand a book-worm: but I can't stand serving at the bar, nothing but noise and quarrels and rows, you can't hear yourself speak. I say, 'put me out as an apprentice, say in a shop where they sell eikons and things, there isn't much to do, and I like eikons.'"
Jakov's eyes blinked mournfully; the skin on his forehead looked very yellow and shone like the bald patch on his father's head.
"Do you still read books?" asked Ilya.
"Rather! It's my only comfort—as long as I can read, I feel as if I were in another place, and when I come to the end I feel as if I had pitched off a church tower."
Ilya looked at him and said:
"How old you look—and where is Mashutka?"
"She's gone to the almshouse for some things. I can't help her much now, father keeps too sharp a look out, and Perfishka is ill all the time, so she has to go to the almshouse. They give away cabbage soup there and that sort of thing. Matiza helps her a bit, but it's hard lines for her, poor Masha!"
"It's dull here—with you—too," said Ilya, thoughtfully.
"Is it dull in business?"
"Frightfully. You've got books at least, and in our whole house there's only one book, the 'Book of Newest Magic and Jugglery,' and the shopman keeps that in his box; and what d'you think, the beast won't let me have it. I hate him. Ah, my lad, it's a beastly life for both of us, isn't it?"