"You will become an architect, won't you?" she asked him repeatedly, trying to inculcate this idea in him.
Once after dinner, while waiting for the coffee in the sitting-room, the father remarked that it was time for him to leave his toys and begin to study in real earnest, but the sister, speaking in a tone which indicated that her authority was recognised, and that her opinion too had to be reckoned with, said:
"I hope, papa, that you will not send him to school."
The father, who was tall, clean-shaven and adorned with a large number of sparkling precious stones, replied, lighting his cigar:
As the conversation turned upon the hunchback he quietly walked out of the room; but he walked slowly and heard his sister say:
"Yes, of course," said the mother, in a low tone, which sounded as cheerless as the autumn wind.
"Boys such as he should be kept in the background," his sister said fervently.
"Yes, he is nothing to be proud of," said the mother. "There is not much sense in his little head."
"Perhaps you are right," the father agreed.
The hunchback came back, stopped in the doorway and said:
"We shall see," said the father; and his mother remarked:
"You will study at home," declared his sister, making him sit down by her side.
"You will study everything that it is necessary for an architect to know. Would you like that?"
She was slightly taller than he, about half a head, but she domineered over everybody, even her father and mother. At that time she was fifteen; he resembled a crab, but she was slim and straight and strong and seemed to him a fairy, under whose power the whole house lived--even he, the little hunchback.
Polite, formal people came to him, explaining things and putting questions to him. But he confessed frankly that he did not understand what they were trying to teach him, and would look in an absent-minded way past his instructors, preoccupied with his own thoughts. It was clear to everybody that he took no interest in ordinary things. He spoke little, but sometimes he asked strange questions.
"What happens to those who don't want to do anything at all?"
The well-trained tutor, in his tightly buttoned black frock-coat--he resembled at once a priest and a soldier--replied: "Everything bad happens to such people, anything that you can imagine. For instance, many of them become socialists."