"Nothing. I said to him, 'It won't do, daddy, for you to eavesdrop at our doors. Some day you may get your nose squashed. And all he said was, 'Well, well, it's nothing, it's nothing. I, my child, am like a thief in the night, as it says in the Bible.'"
"The other day, granny, he picked up an apple in the orchard, and put it away in a cupboard. I ate it up. So he hunted and hunted for it, and cross-examined everybody."
"What do you mean? Has he become a miser?"
"No, he's not exactly stingy, but--how shall I put it? He is just swamped head over heels in little things. He hides slips of paper, and he hunts for wind-fallen fruit."
"Every morning he says mass in his study, and later he gives each of us a little piece of holy wafer, stale as stale can be."
"But once we played a trick on him. We discovered where he keeps the wafers, made a cut in the bottom of them, took out the pulp, and stuck butter in."
"Well, I must say you are regular cut-throats."
"My, just imagine his surprise, next day. Wafers with butter!"
"I suppose you got it good and hard afterwards."
"No, not a bit. But he kept spitting all day and muttering to himself, 'The rascals!' Of course we made believe he didn't mean us."
"Let me tell you, granny, he is afraid of you."
"Of me! I'm not a scarecrow to frighten him."
"I'm sure he's scared of you. He thinks you'll put a curse on him. He's desperately afraid of curses."
Arina Petrovna became lost in thought. At first the idea passed through her mind: "What if I really should put a curse on him--just take and curse him?" But the thought was instantly replaced by a more pressing question, "What is Yudushka doing now? What tricks is he playing upstairs? He must be up to one of his usual tricks." Finally a happy idea struck her.
"Volodya," she said, "you, dear heart, are light on your feet. Why shouldn't you go softly and listen to what's going on up there?"
Volodya tiptoed toward the doors and disappeared through them.
"What made you come over to us to-day?" Arina Petrovna continued with her questioning.
"We meant to come a long time ago, grandma, but today Ulita sent a messenger to say the doctor had been here and uncle was going to die, if not to-day, then surely to-morrow."