Page:Leskov - The Sentry and other Stories.djvu/248

 232 "No, I don't want to do this in a hurry, Vladyko."

"What?"

"I don't want to do it in this way, Vladyko," he said with firmness, and again smiled.

"What are you laughing at?" I said. "And if I order you to baptize."

"I will not obey you," he answered, smiling good-naturedly, and slapping me familiarly on the knee continued:

"Listen, Vladyko, I don't know if you have read it. In the Lives of the Saints there is a fine story"

But I interrupted him and said:

"Spare me the Lives, I beg you; here it is a question of the Word of God and not of the traditions of man. You, monks know, that you can find all sorts of things in the Lives and therefore love to quote them."

"Vladyko, let me finish," he answered. "I may find, even in the Lives, something appropriate."

And he told me an old story, from the first centuries of Christianity, about two friends—one a Christian, the other a heathen. The first often talked to the latter about Christianity and annoyed him with it so much, that though at first he had been indifferent, he suddenly began to abuse it, and at the moment he was showering