Who is he?
My son--he-he-he!" the old man tapped Taras on the shoulder and sprang away from him, as though frightened lest he were rejoicing too soon, lest that might not be the proper way to treat that half gray man.

And he looked searchingly and suspiciously into his son's large eyes, which were surrounded by yellowish swellings.
Taras smiled in his father's face an affable and warm smile, and said to him thoughtfully: "That's the way I remember you--cheerful and lively.

It looks as though you had not changed a bit during all these years." The old man straightened himself proudly, and, striking his breast with his fist, said: "I shall never change, because life has no power over him who knows his own value.

Isn't that so ?" "Oh! How proud you are!" "I must have taken after my son," said the old man with a cunning grimace.

"Do you know, dear, my son was silent for seventeen years out of pride." "That's because his father would not listen to him," Taras reminded him.
"It's all right now.