Page:The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Tchekhoff, 1908.pdf/71

 and blew out the candles, the tarnished candelabra, the threadbare carpet, the clerk Lopukhoff, who ran anxiously from the altar carrying the host to the sexton. All these things he had seen long ago, and again and again, as often as his five fingers. But one thing was unfamiliar. At the north door stood Father Grigori, still in priestly vestments, and angrily twitching his bushy eyebrows.

“What is he frowning at, God be with him?” thought the shopkeeper. “Yes, and he shakes his hand! And stamps his foot! Tell me what that means, please. What does it all mean, Heavenly Mother? Whom is he glaring at?”

Andrei Andreitch looked around, and saw that the church was already deserted. At the door thronged a dozen men, but their backs were turned to the altar.

“Come at once when you are called! Why do you stand there, looking like a statue?” came Father Grigori's angry voice. “I am calling you!”

The shopkeeper looked at Father Grigori's red, wrathful face, and for the first time realised that the frowning eyebrows and twitching fingers were directed at himself. He started, walked away from the choir, and resolutely, in his creaking goloshes, went up to the altar.

“Andrei Andreitch, was it you who handed this in during oblation, for the repose of Marya?” asked