the more of you for being strict."

And as he thus talked to me in his slow and kindly, but
semi-affected, fashion--bespattering me, as it were, with wordy
sawdust--I would suddenly grow blind of an eye and silently show
him the corrected figure.

"That's it--that's right. And how fine the figure looks now, as
it squats there like a merchant's buxom, comely dame!"

Then he would be seen triumphantly telling his mates of his
success; then, I would find myself feeling acutely conscious of
the fact that everyone was despising me for my complacence Yes,
grown sick beyond endurance with a yearning for some thing which
it could not descry, my fifteen-year-old heart would dissolve in
a flood of mortified tears, and there would pass through my
brain the despondent, aching thought:

"Oh, what a sad, uncomfortable world is this! How should Ossip
have known so well that I should not re-correct the 6 into a 5,
or that I should not tell the contractor that the men have
bartered a plank for liquor?"

Again, there befell an occasion when the men stole two pounds'
weight of five vershok mandrels and bolts.

"Look here," I said to Ossip warningly. "I am going to report
this."

"All right," he agreed with a twitch of his grey eyebrows.