When the workingmen saw them, they dispersed, and walked
away slowly, or if they remained standing, they stopped their
conversation, looking silently at the agitated, angry faces.
The workingmen seemed for some reason to be all washed and clean.
The figure of Gusev loomed high, and his brother stalked about like
a drake, and roared with laughter. The joiner's foreman, Vavilov,
and the record clerk, Isay, walked slowly past the mother. The
little, wizened clerk, throwing up his head and turning his neck to
the left, looked at the frowning face of the foreman, and said
quickly, shaking his reddish beard:
"They laugh, Ivan Ivanovich. It's fun to them. They are pleased,
although it's no less a matter than the destruction of the
government, as the manager said. What must be done here, Ivan
Ivanovich, is not merely to weed but to plow!"
Vavilov walked with his hands folded behind his back, and his
fingers tightly clasped.
"You print there what you please, you blackguards!" he cried aloud.
"But don't you dare say a word about me!"
Vasily Gusev came up to Nilovna and declared:
"I am going to eat with you again. Is it good today?" And lowering
his head and screwing up his eyes, he added in an undertone: "You
see? It hit exactly! Good! Oh, mother, very good!"
She nodded her head affably to him, flattered that Gusev, the
sauciest fellow in the village, addressed her with a respectful
plural "you," as he talked to her in secret.
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