And you know that when a man's in the right. . . ."
"Yes, I know—he's not afraid of anything in the world.
But it doesn't prevent him getting hurt."
Timur strode away.
Meanwhile Jenny ran up to Olga, who was carrying her accordion home.
"Olga!"
"Go away!" said Olga without looking at her sister. "I don't want to talk to you any more.
I'm going to Moscow right away, and you can gad about till dawn with whomever you like for all I care."
"But Olga. . . ."
"I don't want to talk to you.
The day after tomorrow we'll move back to Moscow.
And we'll wait for Dad there."
"Yes!
I'll tell Dad, and not you—I'll tell him everything!" Choking with tears of rage, she ran off in search of Timur.
She found Geika and Simakov and asked them if they had seen Timur.
"He's been called home," Geika said. "His uncle's cross with him because of something to do with you."
Jenny, now beside herself, stamped her foot and clenched her fists.
"There's—justice—for you!"
She flung her arms around the trunk of a birch tree, but just then Tanya and Annie rushed up to her.
"Jenny!" cried Tanya. "What's the matter?
Come on, Jenny!
An accordion player has come and the dances have begun—the girls are all there."
They shook her and hugged her and dragged her over to the ring where frocks and blouses bright as flowers could be seen whirling round and round.
"Jenny, don't cry!" said Annie, speaking quickly, as usual, through clenched teeth. "Grandma hits me sometimes but I never cry!
Come on, girls, let's get inside!
Her-r-re goes!"
"Her-r-re goes!" Jenny chimed in laughing imitation of Annie.
Breaking through the ring, they whirled and span in the gay abandon of the dance.
As soon as Timur came in, his uncle took him up.
"I'm sick of your night adventures," George began. "Sick of your signals, buzzers and ropes. What was that strange business with the blanket?"
"That was a mistake."
"Some mistake!
And I'll ask you to leave that girl alone; her sister doesn't like you."
"Why?"
"I don't know.
I suppose you deserve it.
What are these notes you've been writing?
What sort of peculiar dates have you been keeping in the garden at dawn?
Olya says you're making a hoodlum of the girl."
"She's lying," retorted Timur indignantly. "A Komsomol member, too.
If there's anything she doesn't understand, she could ask me.
I'd tell her."
"Good.
But until you have told her, I forbid you to go near their house. And, in general, if you don't do as you're told I'll ship you back to your mother instanter."
He turned to go out.
"Uncle," Timur called after him. "When you were a boy what did you do?
What did you play at?"
"We?
We used to run around, jump, climb roofs. Sometimes we fought.
But our games were all quite simple and everybody could understand them."