My name is Pyotr
Yegorov Ryabinin, nicknamed Shilo--the Awl. I understand something
about your affairs. I can read and write. I'm no fool, so to speak."
He grasped the hand the mother extended to him, and wringing it,
turned to the master of the house.
"There, Stepan, see, Varvara Nikolayevna is a good lady, true. But
in regard to all this, she says it is nonsense, nothing but dreams.
Boys and different students, she says, muddle the people's mind with
absurdities. However, you saw just now a sober, steady man, as he
ought to be, a peasant, arrested. Now, here is she, an elderly
woman, and as to be seen, not of blue blood. Don't be offended--
what's your station in life?"
He spoke quickly and distinctly, without taking breath. His little
beard shook nervously, and his dark eyes, which he screwed up,
rapidly scanned the mother's face and figure. Ragged, crumpled, his
hair disheveled, he seemed just to have come from a fight, in which
he had vanquished his opponent, and still to be flushed with the joy
of victory. He pleased the mother with his sprightliness and his
simple talk, which at once went straight to the point. She gave him
a kind look as she answered his question.
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