Can't you see it all over his face that he is a fool, that peasant, eh?"
"Let him alone, Kolya. Let's go on."
"Nothing could stop me, now I am once off.
Hey, good morning, peasant!"
A sturdy-looking peasant, with a round, simple face and grizzled beard, who was walking by, raised his head and looked at the boy. He seemed not quite sober.
"Good morning, if you are not laughing at me," he said deliberately in reply.
"And if I am?" laughed Kolya.
"Well, a joke's a joke. Laugh away.
I don't mind.
There's no harm in a joke."
"I beg your pardon, brother, it was a joke."
"Well, God forgive you!"
"Do you forgive me, too?"
"I quite forgive you.
Go along."
"I say, you seem a clever peasant."
"Cleverer than you," the peasant answered unexpectedly, with the same gravity.
"I doubt it," said Kolya, somewhat taken aback.
"It's true, though."
"Perhaps it is."
"It is, brother."
"Good-bye, peasant!"
"Good-bye!"
"There are all sorts of peasants," Kolya observed to Smurov after a brief silence. "How could I tell I had hit on a clever one?
I am always ready to recognise intelligence in the peasantry."
In the distance the cathedral clock struck half-past eleven.
The boys made haste and they walked as far as Captain Snegiryov's lodging, a considerable distance, quickly and almost in silence.
Twenty paces from the house Kolya stopped and told Smurov to go on ahead and ask Karamazov to come out to him.
"One must sniff round a bit first," he observed to Smurov.
"Why ask him to come out?" Smurov protested. "You go in; they will be awfully glad to see you.
What's the sense of making friends in the frost out here?"
"I know why I want to see him out here in the frost," Kolya cut him short in the despotic tone he was fond of adopting with "small boys," and Smurov ran to do his bidding.
Chapter 4.
The Lost Dog
KOLYA leaned against the fence with an air of dignity, waiting for Alyosha to appear.
Yes, he had long wanted to meet him.
He had heard a great deal about him from the boys, but hitherto he had always maintained an appearance of disdainful indifference when he was mentioned, and he had even "criticised" what he heard about Alyosha.
But secretely he had a great longing to make his acquaintance; there was something sympathetic and attractive in all he was told about Alyosha.
So the present moment was important: to begin with, he had to show himself at his best, to show his independence.
"Or he'll think of me as thirteen and take me for a boy, like the rest of them.
And what are these boys to him?
I shall ask him when I get to know him.
It's a pity I am so short, though.
Tuzikov is younger than I am, yet he is half a head taller.
But I have a clever face. I am not good-looking. I know I'm hideous, but I've a clever face.
I mustn't talk too freely; if I fall into his arms all at once, he may think- Tfoo! how horrible if he should think- !"
Such were the thoughts that excited Kolya while he was doing his utmost to assume the most independent air.
What distressed him most was his being so short; he did not mind so much his "hideous" face, as being so short.
On the wall in a corner at home he had the year before made a pencil-mark to show his height, and every two months since he anxiously measured himself against it to see how much he had gained.
But alas! he grew very slowly, and this sometimes reduced him almost to despair.