“Nephew of Ivan Ivanitch?  Here I have taken off my boots and am hopping along barefoot.  My feet are bad; they are swollen, and it’s easier without my boots . . . easier, youngster . . . without boots, I mean. . . .  So you are his nephew?  He is a good man; no harm in him. . . .  God give him health. . . .  No harm in him . . .  I mean Ivan Ivanitch. . . .  He has gone to the Molokans’. . . .  O Lord, have mercy upon us!”

The old man talked, too, as though it were very cold, pausing and not opening his mouth properly; and he mispronounced the labial consonants, stuttering over them as though his lips were frozen.  As he talked to Yegorushka he did not once smile, and he seemed stern.

Two waggons ahead of them there walked a man wearing a long reddish-brown coat, a cap and high boots with sagging bootlegs and carrying a whip in his hand.  This was not an old man, only about forty.  When he looked round Yegorushka saw a long red face with a scanty goat-beard and a spongy looking swelling under his right eye.  Apart from this very ugly swelling, there was another peculiar thing about him which caught the eye at once:  in his left hand he carried a whip, while he waved the right as though he were conducting an unseen choir; from time to time he put the whip under his arm, and then he conducted with both hands and hummed something to himself.

The next driver was a long rectilinear figure with extremely sloping shoulders and a back as flat as a board.  He held himself as stiffly erect as though he were marching or had swallowed a yard measure.  His hands did not swing as he walked, but hung down as if they were straight sticks, and he strode along in a wooden way, after the manner of toy soldiers, almost without bending his knees, and trying to take as long steps as possible.  While the old man or the owner of the spongy swelling were taking two steps he succeeded in taking only one, and so it seemed as though he were walking more slowly than any of them, and would drop behind.  His face was tied up in a rag, and on his head something stuck up that looked like a monk’s peaked cap; he was dressed in a short Little Russian coat, with full dark blue trousers and bark shoes.

Yegorushka did not even distinguish those that were farther on.  He lay on his stomach, picked a little hole in the bale, and, having nothing better to do, began twisting the wool into a thread.  The old man trudging along below him turned out not to be so stern as one might have supposed from his face.  Having begun a conversation, he did not let it drop.

“Where are you going?” he asked, stamping with his feet.

“To school,” answered Yegorushka.

“To school?  Aha! . . .  Well, may the Queen of Heaven help you.  Yes.  One brain is good, but two are better.  To one man God gives one brain, to another two brains, and to another three. . . .  To another three, that is true. . . .  One brain you are born with, one you get from learning, and a third with a good life.  So you see, my lad, it is a good thing if a man has three brains.  Living is easier for him, and, what’s more, dying is, too.  Dying is, too. . . .  And we shall all die for sure.”