“From where, eh? Our business is like a well with two buckets. One bucket fills and the other grows empty. One goes up and the other goes down. I used to wear bast shoes; now I wear boots. Opanas used to wear boots; now he goes barefoot because he’s a fool. The bucket comes to the wise man full and goes away empty. Now do you understand?”
The devil listened attentively, and said:
“Wait a minute! At last we seem to be getting somewhere!”
“But I’ve been telling you the same thing all along. If you call Yankel kvass, then the miller is beer; but if you were to give me a glass of good vodka, I should let the beer alone.”
The tip of the devil’s tail skipped about so madly on the sand that Kharko noticed it at last. He blew a puff of smoke right into the devil’s face, and put his foot on the tail as if by accident. The devil jumped, and yelped like a great dog. Both he and Kharko took fright; they opened their eyes wide, and stood for half a minute staring at one another without saying a word.
At last Kharko whistled in that insolent way of his, and said:
“Ah, ha! ah, ha! So that’s the game, is it?”
“And what did you think?” asked the devil.
“Now I know the kind of a queer bird you are!”
“I’m what you see I am.”