-handed.) He
curled up his finger and thumb, closed his eye, and began to fillip me
on the nose. And how, do you think? Each time I saw my father in the
other world. Murderers, slaughterers! What had they against my nose?
What had it done to them? Whom had it bothered? What had they seen on
it--a nose like all noses.

"Boys, count," commanded Hosea Hessel. "One, two, three--"

But suddenly....

Nearly always, since ever the world began, when a misfortune happens to
a man--when robbers surround him in a wood, bind his hands, sharpen
their knives, tell him to say his prayers, and are about to finish him
off, there comes a woodman with a bell. The robbers run away, and the
man lifts his hands on high and praises the Lord for his deliverance.

It was just like that with me and my nose. I don't remember whether it
was at the fifth or sixth blow that the door opened, and Benny
"_Polkovoi_" came in. The boys freed me at once, and remained standing
like blocks of wood. Benny took them in hand, one by one. He caught each
boy by the ear, twisted it round, and said:

"Well, now you will know what it means to meddle with a widow's boy."

From that day the boys did not touch either me or my nose. They were
afraid to begin with the widow's boy whom Benny had taken under his
wing, into his guardianship, under his protection.

* * *

"The widow's boy"--- I had no other name at "_Cheder_." This was because
my mother was a widow. She supported herself by her own work. She had a
little shop in which were, for the most part, so far as I can remember,
chalk and locust-beans--the two things that sell best in Mazapevka.
Chalk is wanted for white-washing the houses, and locust-beans are a
luxury. They are sweet, and they are light in weight, and they are
cheap. Schoolboys spend on them all the money they get for breakfast
and dinner. And the shopkeepers make a good profit out of them. I could
never understand why my mother was always complaining that she could
hardly make enough to pay the rent and my school-fees. Why school-fees?
What about the other things a human being needs, food and clothes and
boots, for example? She thought of nothing but the school-fees. "When
the Lord punished me," she wailed, "and took my husband from me--and
such a husband!--and left me all alone, I want my son to be a scholar,
at any rate." What do you say to that? Do you think she did not come
frequently to the "_Cheder_" to find out how I was getting on?