“I’ll never, ever believe,” Nastya ardently prattled, “that midwives find little babies in the vegetable garden, between the cabbage rows. It’s winter now and there aren’t any cabbage rows, and the midwife couldn’t have brought Katerina a baby girl.”

“Whe-ew!” Kolya whistled to himself.

“Or maybe it’s like this: they do bring them from somewhere, but only when people get married.” Kostya stared at Nastya, listened gravely, and pondered.

“Nastya, what a fool you are,” he said at last, firmly and without excitement. “Where could Katerina get a baby if she’s not married?”

Nastya grew terribly excited.

“You don’t understand anything,” she cut him short irritably. “Maybe she had a husband, but he’s in prison now, so she went and had a baby.”

“But is her husband in prison?” the staid Kostya inquired gravely.

“Or else,” Nastya swiftly interrupted, completely abandoning and forgetting her first hypothesis, “she hasn’t got a husband, you’re right about that, but she wants to get married, so she started thinking how to get married, and she kept thinking and thinking, and she thought so much that now she got a baby instead.”

“Well, maybe,” agreed the utterly defeated Kostya, “but you didn’t say that before, so how could I know?”

“Well, kids,” said Kolya, taking a step into the room, “you’re dangerous people, I see!”

“And Perezvon, too?” Kostya grinned, and began snapping his fingers and calling Perezvon.

“I’m in trouble, squirts,” Krasotkin began importantly, “and you’ve got to help me: of course Agafya must have broken her leg, since she’s not back yet, that’s signed and sealed, but I have to leave. Will you let me go or not?”

The children worriedly exchanged looks, their grinning faces showed signs of anxiety. However, they still did not quite understand what was wanted of them.

“You won’t get into mischief while I’m gone? You won’t climb on the cupboard and break your leg? You won’t cry from fear if you’re left alone?”

Terrible grief showed on the children’s faces.

“And to make up for it I’ll show you a little something—it’s a little brass cannon that shoots with real powder.”

The children’s faces brightened at once.

“Show us the little cannon,” Kostya said, beaming all over.

Krasotkin thrust his hand into his bag, pulled out a little bronze cannon, and placed it on the table.

“‘Show us, show us! ‘ Look, it has little wheels,” he drove the toy along the table, “and it can shoot. Load it with small shot and it shoots.”

“And can it kill somebody?”

“It can kill everybody, you just have to aim it,” and Krasotkin explained how to put in the powder and roll in the shot, showed the little hole for the primer, and explained to them that there was such a thing as recoil. The children listened with terrible curiosity. What particularly struck theirimagination was that there was such a thing as recoil.

“And have you got some powder?” Nastya inquired.

“I have.”

“Show us the powder, too,” she whined with an imploring smile.

Krasotkin again went into his bag, and took out of it a small bottle, which indeed contained some real powder, and a folded paper, which turned out to have a few pellets of shot in it. He even opened the bottle and poured a little powder out in his palm.

“So long as there’s no fire around, or it would explode and kill us all,” Krasotkin warned, for the sake of effect.

The children gazed at the powder with an awestruck fear, which only increased their pleasure. But Kostya liked the shot better.

“Does shot burn?” he inquired.

“Shot does not burn.”

“Give me some shot,” he said in a pleading voice.

“I’llgive you a little, here, take it, only don’t show it to your mother before I come back, or she may think it’s powder, and she’ll die of fear and give you a whipping.”

“Mama never beats us,” Nastya observed at once.

“I know, I just said it for the beauty of the style. And you should never deceive your mama, except this once—till I come back. Well, squirts, can I go or not? Are you going to cry from fear without me?”

“We w-will c-cry,” Kostya whined, already preparing to cry.

“We will, we really will cry!” Nastya added in a frightened patter.

“Oh, children, children, how perilous are your years.^[278] So, there’s nothing to be done, chicks, I’ll have to stay with you I don’t know how long. And the time, the time, oof!”

“Tell Perezvon to play dead,” Kostya asked.

“Well, nothing to be done, I’ll have to resort to Perezvon. Ici, Perezvon!” And Kolya began giving orders to the dog, and he began doing all his tricks. He was a shaggy dog, the size of any ordinary mongrel, with a sort of blue gray coat. He was blind in his right eye, and his left ear for some reason had a nick in it. He squealed and jumped, stood and walked on his hind legs, threw himself on his back with all four legs in the air and lay motionless as if dead. During this last trick the door opened and Agafya, Mrs. Krasotkin’s fat maid, a pockmarked woman of about forty, appeared on the threshold, returning from the market with a paper bag full of groceries in her hand. She stood with the bag perched on her left hand and began watching the dog. Kolya, however eagerly he had been waiting for Agafya, did not interrupt the performance,and having kept Perezvon dead for a certain length of time, finally whistled: the dog jumped up and began leaping for joy at having fulfilled his duty.

“Some dog that is!” Agafya said didactically.

“Why are you late, female sex?” Krasotkin asked sternly. “Female sex yourself, pipsqueak.”

“Pipsqueak?”

“Yes, pipsqueak. What’s it to you if I’m late? If I’m late I must have had good reason,” Agafya muttered, as she started bustling about the stove, not at all in a displeased or angry voice, but, on the contrary, sounding very pleased, as if she were glad of the chance to exchange quips with her cheerful young master.

“Listen, you frivolous old woman,” Krasotkin began, rising from the sofa, “will you swear to me by all that’s holy in this world, and something else besides, that you will keep a constant eye on the squirts in my absence? I’m going out.”

“Why should I go swearing to you?” Agafya laughed. “I’ll look after them anyway.”

“No, not unless you swear by the eternal salvation of your soul. Otherwise I won’t go.”

“Don’t go, then. I don’t care. It’s freezing out; stay home.”

“Squirts,” Kolya turned to the children, “this woman will stay with you till I come back, or till your mama comes, because she, too, should have been back long ago. And furthermore she will give you lunch. Will you fix them something, Agafya?”

“Could be.”

“Good-bye, chicks, I’m going with an easy heart. And you, granny,” he said, imposingly and in a low voice, as he passed by Agafya, “spare their young years, don’t go telling them all your old wives’ nonsense about Katerina. Ici, Perezvon!”

“And you know where you can go!” Agafya snarled, this time in earnest. “Funny boy! Ought to be whipped yourself for such talk, that’s what.”

Chapter 3: A Schoolboy

But Kolya was no longer listening. At last he was able to leave. He walked out the gate, looked around, hunched his shoulders, and having said “Freezing!” set off straight down the street and then turned right down a lane to the mar- , ket square. When he reached the next to the last house before the square, he stopped at the gate, pulled a whistle out of his pocket, and whistled with all his might, as if giving a prearranged signal. He did not have to wait more than a minute—a ruddy-cheeked boy of about eleven years old suddenly ran out to him through the gate, also wearing a warm, clean, and even stylish coat. This was the Smurov boy, who was in the preparatory class (whereas Kolya Krasotkin was two years ahead), the son of a well-to-do official, whose parents evidently would not allow him to go around with Krasotkin, a notoriously desperate prankster, so that this time Smurov obviously had escaped on the sly. This Smurov, if the reader has not forgotten, was one of the group of boys who were throwing stones at Ilyusha across the ditch two months before, and had told Alyosha Karamazov then about Ilyusha.