"No no, we're all little--just children," Masha put in, and struck the table with her fist, "and that's why we don't need any low words."
"You gave me a jolly good licking, all the same," said Ilya to Jakov reproachfully.
"You deserved it, don't complain!" said Masha, sententiously, and with a darkened face.
"All right--all right I'm not angry, it was my fault," and Ilya smiled at Petrusha's son. "We'll make it up, shall we?"
And with that peace was made. A moment later, Ilya was deep in the game, thoughtfully wrinkling his brow. He always arranged to play next to Masha; he disliked her to lose, and thought of little else all through the game. But the child played quite cleverly, and generally it was Jakov who lost.
"Oh you goggle eyes!" Masha would say, pityingly, "You've lost again."
"Devil take the cards!" answered Jakov, "it's jolly dull, nothing but playing cards. Let's read some more Kamtchadalky."
They got out a torn and dirty book and read the sorrowful history of the amorous and unfortunate Kamtchadalky.
When Pashka saw the three children amuse themselves so pleasantly, he used to say in the tone of a world explorer:
"You lead a pleasant life here, you cunning ones."
Then he would look at Jakov and Masha and smile, then add seriously:
"Go on all the same! and later on you can marry Masha, eh Jakov?"
"Silly," Masha would say, laughing, and then they all four laughed together.
Pashka was generally with them. If they had finished a book or if there was a pause in the reading, he would relate his experiences, and his tales were no less interesting than the books.
"When I found, lads, that I couldn't travel easily without a passport, I had to be very cunning. When I saw a policeman, I used to walk faster, as if some one had sent me on an errand, or I'd get up alongside the nearest grown up person, as if he was my master or my father, or some one; the policeman would look at me and let me go on, he didn't notice anything.
"It was jolly in the villages. They don't have policemen, only old men, and old women and children, peasants that work on the fields. If any one asks me who I am, I say a beggar; whom I do belong to? No one, got no relations. Where do I come from? From the town. That's all. They'd give me things to eat and drink--good things. And then you can go where you like, can run as fast as you like or crawl if you want to. And the fields and the woods are everywhere, the larks sing, you feel as if you could fly up with them. When you're full, then you don't want anything else; feel as if you could go to the end of the world. It's just as if someone was coaxing you on, like a mother with a child. But lots of times I've been jolly hungry. Oho! and my stomach wasted inside, it was so dried up. I could have eaten the dirt, my head was giddy; but then if I got a bit of bread and got my teeth in it--ah--aah--that was good--I could have eaten all day and all night. That was something like! All the same I was glad when I got into prison. At first I was frightened, but soon I was quite pleased.