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His big eyes first began blinking, then were dimmed with moisture, and the boy's face began working. "But why are you scolding?" squealed Petya. "Why do you attack me, you stupid? I am not interfering with anybody; I am not naughty; I do what I am told, and yet . . . you are cross! Why are you scolding me?" The boy spoke with conviction, and wept so bitterly that Zaikin felt conscience-stricken.
We are acting 'The Lodger with the Trombone' and 'Waiting for Him. . . . The performance is the day after tomorrow. . . ." "Why did you bring them?" asked Zaikin. "I couldn't help it, Poppet; after tea we must rehearse our parts and sing something. . . . I am to sing a duet with Koromyslov. . . . Oh, yes, I was almost forgetting!
"Yes, really, why am I falling foul of him?" he thought. "Come, come," he said, touching the boy on the shoulder. "I am sorry, Petya . . . forgive me. You are my good boy, my nice boy, I love you." Petya wiped his eyes with his sleeve, sat down, with a sigh, in the same place and began cutting out the queen. Zaikin went off to his own room.
"It's altogether abominable," said Zaikin after a brief silence. "I maintain, sir, that summer holidays are the invention of the devil and of woman. The devil was actuated in the present instance by malice, woman by excessive frivolity. Mercy on us, it is not life at all; it is hard labour, it is hell!
In the room which was called indifferently the parlour or the drawing-room, Zaikin found his son Petya, a little boy of six. Petya was sitting at the table, and breathing loudly with his lower lip stuck out, was engaged in cutting out the figure of a knave of diamonds from a card. "Oh, that's you, father!" he said, without turning round. "Good-evening." "Good-evening. . . . And where is mother?"
I was delighted to see them, although . . . it's very damp! And you, too, are enjoying Nature?" "Yes," grunted Zaikin, "I am enjoying it, too. . . . Do you know whether there is any sort of tavern or restaurant in the neighbourhood?" Ginger Trousers raised his eyes to heaven and meditated profoundly.
Trudging along among the others was Pavel Matveyitch Zaikin, a member of the Circuit Court, a tall, stooping man, in a cheap cotton dust-coat and with a cockade on his faded cap. He was perspiring, red in the face, and gloomy. . . . "Do you come out to your holiday home every day?" said a summer visitor, in ginger-coloured trousers, addressing him. "No, not every day," Zaikin answered sullenly.
"Why, the grasshopper is still alive!" said Petya in surprise. "I caught him yesterday morning, and he is still alive!" "Who taught you to pin them in this way?" "Olga Kirillovna." "Olga Kirillovna ought to be pinned down like that herself!" said Zaikin with repulsion. "Take them away! It's shameful to torture animals." "My God! How horribly he is being brought up!" he thought, as Petya went out.
"Mamma took Natalya with her to help her dress for the performance, and Akulina has gone to the wood to get mushrooms. Father, why is it that when gnats bite you their stomachs get red?" "I don't know. . . . Because they suck blood. So there is no one in the house, then?" "No one; I am all alone in the house." Zaikin sat down in an easy-chair, and for a moment gazed blankly at the window.
"Father, can you act in plays?" he heard Petya's voice. "Oh, don't worry me with stupid questions!" said Zaikin, getting angry. "He sticks to one like a leaf in the bath! Here you are, six years old, and just as silly as you were three years ago. . . . Stupid, neglected child! Why are you spoiling those cards, for instance? How dare you spoil them?"
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