Page:Andreyev - The Little Angel (Knopf, 1916).djvu/210

204 Sighing heavily as he bent down he knocked his short sword against a stone, and sat down on his heels near to Garaska.

“Well,” he muttered in confusion, “perhaps it is not broken.”

“Not broken! Why yer was ready to break my snout for me. Brute!”

“But what did you shove for!”

“What for–” mimicked Garaska. “I was going–like a gentleman to–and him to–the lock up. Think that’s my last egg? Yer lump!”

Bargamot sniffed. He did not feel in the least hurt by Garaska’s abuse; through his whole ill-organized interior he felt a sort of half pity, half shame, while in the remotest depths of his stout body something kept tiresomely wimbling and torturing.

“Can one help giving you a thrashing?” said Bargamot, more to himself than to Garaska.

“Not you, you garden scarecrow! Now look ’ere.”

Garaska was evidently falling into his usual groove. In his somewhat clearing brain he was picturing to himself a whole perspective of the most compromising terms of abuse, and most insulting epithets, when Bargamot cleared his throat with a sound which left not the slightest doubt as to the firmness of his determination and declared:

“We’ll go to my house, and break the fast.”