And every time one of the men, one of those enormous, invariably inimical men who were busy with themselves, looked at mamma fixedly for a long time, Yura felt bored and uneasy.

He felt like stationing himself between him and mamma, and no matter where he went to attend to his own affairs, something was drawing him back.
Sometimes mamma would utter a bad, terrifying phrase: "Why are you forever staying around here?
Go and play in your own room." There was nothing left for him to do but to go away.

He would take a book along or he would sit down to draw, but that did not always help him.

Sometimes mamma would praise him for reading but sometimes she would say again: "You had better go to your own room, Yurochka.

You see, you've spilt water on the tablecloth again; you always do some mischief with your drawing." And then she would reproach him for being perverse.