"Impossible. You just begin to talk to him, then he doesn't let go of you. 'Don't hurry and wait a while. Gently, gently, take it easy.' Really, granny, his talk is too tiresome for words."
"Granny, he listens to us on the sly behind our doors. Just the other day Piotr caught him in the act."
"Oh, you rogues! Well, what did he say?"
"Nothing. I said to him, 'It won't do, daddy, for you to eavesdrop at our doors. Some day you may get your nose squashed. And all he said was, 'Well, well, it's nothing, it's nothing. I, my child, am like a thief in the night, as it says in the Bible.'"
"The other day, granny, he picked up an apple in the orchard, and put it away in a cupboard. I ate it up. So he hunted and hunted for it, and cross-examined everybody."
"What do you mean? Has he become a miser?"
"No, he's not exactly stingy, but—how shall I put it? He is just swamped head over heels in little things. He hides slips of paper, and he hunts for wind-fallen fruit."
"Every morning he says mass in his study, and later he gives each of us a little piece of holy wafer, stale as stale can be."
"But once we played a trick on him. We discovered where he keeps the wafers, made a cut in the bottom of them, took out the pulp, and stuck butter in."
"Well, I must say you are regular cut-throats."