on the spot. He was going to make a complaint against me to the masters. He is not allowed to go about with me now, no one is allowed to go about with me now. Smurov is not allowed to either, I’ve got a bad name with everyone. They say I’m a ‘desperate character,’ ” Kolya smiled scornfully. “It all began from what happened on the railway.”
“Ah, we’ve heard of that exploit of yours, too,” cried the captain. “How could you lie still on the line? Is it possible you weren’t the least afraid, lying there under the train? Weren’t you frightened?”
The captain was abject in his flattery of Kolya.
“N—not particularly,” answered Kolya carelessly. “What’s blasted my reputation more than anything here was that cursed goose,” he said, turning again to Ilusha. But though he assumed an unconcerned air as he talked, he still could not control himself and was continually missing the note he tried to keep up.
“Ah! I heard about the goose!” Ilusha laughed, beaming all over. “They told me, but I didn’t understand. Did they really take you to the court?”
“The most stupid, trivial affair, they made a mountain of a molehill as they always do,” Kolya began carelessly. “I was walking through the marketplace here one day, just when they’d driven in the geese. I stopped and looked at them. All at once a fellow, who is an errand-boy at Plotnikov’s now, looked at me and said, ‘What are you looking at the geese for?’ I looked at him; he was a stupid, moon-faced fellow of twenty. I am always on the side of the peasantry, you know. I like talking to the peasants. … We’ve dropped behind the peasants—that’s