Page:Korolenko - Makar's Dream and Other Stories.djvu/262

238 in the same house with him or he wouldn't sleep a wink.

"Gavrilo!" said the miller. "Hey, Gavrilo!"

"Well, then, what is it? If I couldn't sleep myself at least I wouldn't keep others awake!"

"Did they beat you again?"

"What if they did?"

"Where have you been?"

"You want to know everything, don't you? In Konda."

"In Konda? Why did you go there?"

"Because! What else do you want to know? Hee, hee, hee!"

"Aren't there girls enough for you in Novokamensk?"

"Bah! It makes me sick to look at them. There isn't one there that suits me."

"What about Galya, the widow's daughter?"

"Galya? What do I care about Galya?"

"What, have you been courting her?"

"Of course I have; what do you think?"

The miller flounced over in bed.

"You're lying, you hound; a plague seize your mother!"

"I'm not lying and I never lie. I leave that to cleverer men than I am."

Gavrilo yawned and said in a sleepy voice:

"Do you remember, master, how my right eye