Page:Andreyev - The Little Angel (Knopf, 1916).djvu/20

14 the Christmas tree. The housemaid came," he whispered.

"Get along with you!" said Sashka with incredulity.

"Fact! The old woman there has purposely not told you, but she has mended your jacket all the same."

"Non—sense," Sashka replied, still more surprised.

The Svetchnikovs were rich people, who had put him to the grammar school, and after his expulsion had forbidden him their house.

His father once more took his oath to the truth of his statement, and Sashka became meditative.

"Well then, move, shift a bit," he said to his father, as he leapt upon the short bench, adding:

"I won't go to those devils. I should prove jolly well too much for them, if I were to turn up. Depraved boy," drawled Sashka in imitation of his patrons. "They are none too good themselves, the smug-faced prigs!"

"Oh! Sashka, Sashka," his father complained, sitting hunched up with cold, "you'll come to a bad end."

"What about yourself, then?" was Sashka's rude rejoinder. "Better shut up. Afraid of the old woman. Ba! old muff!"

His father sat on in silence and shivered. A faint light found its way through a broad clink at the top, where the partition failed to meet the