come along. But take off your coat.”
And beginning to help him off with his coat, he cried out again:
“Look, your coat’s covered with blood, too!”
“That … it’s not the coat. It’s only a little here on the sleeve. … And that’s only here where the handkerchief lay. It must have soaked through. I must have sat on the handkerchief at Fenya’s, and the blood’s come through,” Mitya explained at once with a childlike unconsciousness that was astounding. Pyotr Ilyitch listened, frowning.
“Well, you must have been up to something; you must have been fighting with someone,” he muttered.
They began to wash. Pyotr Ilyitch held the jug and poured out the water. Mitya, in desperate haste, scarcely soaped his hands (they were trembling, and Pyotr Ilyitch remembered it afterwards). But the young official insisted on his soaping them thoroughly and rubbing them more. He seemed to exercise more and more sway over Mitya, as time went on. It may be noted in passing that he was a young man of sturdy character.