"What can I do? You must bear it. It'll pass off."
"I'll give it to him next time though, see if I don't," threatened Ilya through his tears.
"No, don't do that," said his uncle decidedly. "You mustn't do that, anyway."
"He!--he belongs here, d'you see, and you're a stranger."
Ilya went on pouring out threats against Pashka, but his uncle became angry all at once, and stormed at him, a thing that very rarely happened. So the consciousness dawned in Ilya, that he was not the equal of the children who belonged to the place, and while from that time he hid his enmity to Pashka, he clung all the closer to Jakov.
Jakov always behaved himself very well; he never fought the other boys and seldom so much as shouted at them. Even in the games, he hardly ever joined the others though he loved to speak of the games the children of the rich played in the town park. Jakov's only friend among the other children of the house, excepting Ilya, was Mashka, the seven-year-old daughter of the cobbler Perfishka. Mashka was a dirty, delicate, sickly child. Her little head of black curls flitted about the court from morning to night. Her mother sat almost all the time in the doorway leading to the cellar. She was tall, with a long plait of hair down her back, and sewed incessantly, bent double over her work. Whenever she raised her head to look after her daughter, Ilya could see her face. It was a purplish, expressionless, bloated face--like the face of a corpse. Even her pleasant black eyes had about them something fixed, immovable. She spoke to no one, even to her daughter she used to beckon if she wanted her. Only very rarely she would cry in a hoarse, half-choked voice:
At first, something about this woman took Ilya's fancy. But later, when he learnt that she had been a cripple for three years and would soon die, he grew afraid of her.
Once, as Ilya passed close to her, she stretched out an arm, caught him by the sleeve and drew him, terrified, up to her.
"Please, please, my son," she said, "be good to our Mashka! Be good to her." Speech came from her with difficulty, she struggled for breath after it. "Be--very good to her, my dear."
She looked with imploring eyes in his face and let him go. Ilya from that time took charge of the cobbler's daughter with Jakov, and looked after her carefully. He liked to fulfil the request of a grown-up person the more, as most of them only spoke to him to order him about. The men and women were always very harsh to the children. Makar, the coachman, kicked at them, or struck them in the face with wet cloths if they wanted to look on at the cleaning of the carriages. Savel raged at every one who looked with curiosity into his smithy and threw coal-grit at the children. The cobbler flung the first thing that came handy at the head of any one who stood in front of his cellar window and blocked out the light. Sometimes they would strike the children for want of any other occupation or by way of playing with them. Only grandfather Jeremy never struck them.