accosted him, shaking his head reproachfully:
“Eh, you red-headed slanderer! It isn’t worth while to be friends with you, blockhead!”
“Why do you abuse me?” asked Smolin, calmly, examining Foma fixedly.
“I am not abusing you; I am telling the truth,” Yozhov explained, straightening himself with animation. “Listen! Although you are a kissel, but – let it go! We’ll come up to see you on Sunday after mass.”
“Come,” Smolin nodded his head.
“We’ll come up. They’ll ring the bell soon. I must run to sell the siskin,” declared Yozhov, pulling out of his pocket a paper package, wherein some live thing was struggling. And he disappeared from the school-yard as mercury from the palm of a hand.
“What a queer fellow he is!” said Foma, dumfounded by Yozhov’s adroitness and looking at Smolin interrogatively.
“He is always like this. He’s very clever,” the red-headed boy explained.
“And cheerful, too,” added Foma.
“Cheerful, too,” Smolin assented. Then they became silent, looking at each other.
“Will you come up with him to my house?” asked the red-headed boy.
“Yes.”
“Come up. It’s nice there.”
Foma said nothing to this. Then Smolin asked him:
“Have you many friends?”
“I have none.”
“Neither did I have any friends before I went to school. Only cousins. Now you’ll have two friends at once.”
“Yes,” said Foma.
“Are you glad?”
“I’m glad.”
“When you have lots of friends, it is lively. And it is easier to study, too – they prompt you.”
“And are you a good pupil?”
“Of course! I do everything well,” said Smolin, calmly.
The bell began to bang as though it had been frightened and was hastily running somewhere.
Sitting in school, Foma began to feel somewhat freer, and compared his friends with the rest of the boys. He soon learned that they both were the very best boys in school and that they were the first to attract everybody’s attention, even as the two figures 5 and 7, which had not yet been wiped off the blackboard. And Foma felt very much pleased that his friends were better than any of the other boys.
They all went home from school together, but Yozhov soon turned into some narrow side street, while Smolin walked with Foma up to his very house, and, departing, said:
“You see, we both go home the same way, too.”
At home Foma was met with pomp: his father made him a present of a heavy silver spoon, with an ingenious monogram on it, and his aunt gave him a scarf knitted by herself. They were awaiting him for dinner, having prepared his favourite dishes for him, and as soon as he took off his coat, seated him at the table and began to ply him with questions.
“Well, how was it? How did you like the school?” asked Ignat, looking lovingly at his son’s rosy, animated face.
“Pretty good. It’s nice!” replied Foma.
“My darling!” sighed his aunt, with feeling, “look out, hold your own with your friends. As soon as they offend you tell your teachers about it.”
“Go on. What else will you tell him?” Ignat smiled. “Never do that! Try to get square with every offender yourself, punish him with your own hand, not with somebody else’s. Are there any good fellows there?”
“There are two,” Foma smiled, recalling Yozhov. “One of them is so bold – terrible!”
“Whose is he?”
“A guard’s son.”
“Mm! Bold did you say?”
“Dreadfully bold!”
“Well, let him be! And the other?”
“The other one is red-headed. Smolin.”
“Ah! Evidently Mitry Ivanovitch’s son. Stick to him, he’s good company. Mitry is a clever peasant. If the son takes after his father it is all right. But that other one – you know, Foma, you had better invite them to our house on Sunday. I’ll buy some presents and you can treat them. We’ll see what sort of boys they are.”
“Smolin asked me to come to him this Sunday,” said Foma, looking up at his father questioningly.
“So. Well, you may go! That’s all right, go. Observe what kind of people there are in the world. You cannot pass your life alone, without friendship. Your godfather and I, for instance, have been friends for more than twenty years, and I have profited a great deal by his common sense. So you, too, try to be friendly with those that are better and wiser than you. Rub against a good man, like a copper coin against silver, and you may then pass for a silver coin yourself.”
And, bursting into laughter at his comparison, Ignat added seriously:
“I was only jesting. Try to be, not artificial, but genuine. And have some common sense, no matter how little, but your own. Have you many lessons to do?”
“Many!” sighed the boy, and to his sigh, like an echo, his aunt answered with a heavy sigh.
“Well, study. Don’t be worse than others at school. Although, I’ll tell you, even if there were twenty-five classes in your school, they could never teach you there anything save reading, writing and arithmetic. You may also learn some naughty things, but God protect you! I shall give you a terrible spanking if you do. If you smoke tobacco I’ll cut your lips off.”
“Remember God, Fomushka,” said the aunt. “See that you don’t forget our Lord.”
“That’s true! Honour God and your father. But I wish to tell you that school books are but a trivial matter. You need these as a carpenter needs an adze and a pointer. They are tools, but the tools cannot teach you how to make use of them. Understand? Let us see: Suppose an adze were handed to a carpenter for him to square a beam with it. It’s not enough to have hands and an adze; it is also necessary for him to know how to strike the wood so as not to hit his foot instead. To you the knowledge of reading and writing is given, and you must regulate your life with it. Thus it follows that books alone are but a trifle in this matter; it is necessary to be able to take advantage of them. And it is this ability that is more cunning than any books, and yet nothing about it is written in the books. This, Foma, you must learn from Life itself. A book is a dead thing, you may take it as you please, you may tear it, break it – it will not cry out. While should you but make a single wrong step in life, or wrongly occupy a place in it, Life will start to bawl at you in a thousand voices; it will deal you a blow, felling you to the ground.”
Foma, his elbows leaning on the table, attentively listened to his father, and under the sound of his powerful voice he pictured to himself now the carpenter
