afraid of soiling my clothes. And the best of it all was, I was
living on my own account and no burden to anyone!

Painting roofs, especially with our own oil and colours, was regarded
as a particularly profitable job, and so this rough, dull work was
not disdained, even by such good workmen as Radish. In short breeches,
and wasted, purple-looking legs, he used to go about the roofs,
looking like a stork, and I used to hear him, as he plied his brush,
breathing heavily and saying: "Woe, woe to us sinners!"

He walked about the roofs as freely as though he were upon the
ground. In spite of his being ill and pale as a corpse, his agility
was extraordinary: he used to paint the domes and cupolas of the
churches without scaffolding, like a young man, with only the help
of a ladder and a rope, and it was rather horrible when standing
on a height far from the earth; he would draw himself up erect, and
for some unknown reason pronounce:

"Lice consume grass, rust consumes iron, and lying the soul!"

Or, thinking about something, would answer his thoughts aloud:

"Anything may happen! Anything may happen!"

When I went home from my work, all the people who were sitting on
benches by the gates, all the shopmen and boys and their employers,
made sneering and spiteful remarks after me, and this upset me at
first and seemed to be simply monstrous.

"Better-than-nothing!" I heard on all sides. "House painter! Yellow