Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/44

22 to help?" he would urge when people tried to harden his heart against those who couldn't pay.

An extraordinarily kind, impracticable fellow, with a flat in complete disorder, with an adopted child but no wife; lazy and thieving servants. Neighbours have stolen much of his furniture, even the ikons from some of the rooms; and the candles burn in the empty corners from which the ikons have been stolen! That is Russian.

Vassia and I were invited to an astonishing all-night feast given in honour of Katia on the occasion of her last name-day before marriage.

We sat down to dinner at six, we got up from dinner at half-past eleven; we went to the drawing-room and talked and sang till a quarter past twelve, then we returned to the dining-room for tea and coffee and dessert.

The funniest moments were when the bride's father sat on the floor pretending he was drunk, and when the bridegroom, to prove he was not tipsy, crawled under the table on all fours among the guests' feet and went from one end to the other, and then jumped up and gave a military salute.

They drank too much. They were near quarrelling at the end. One of the guests shouted in a loud voice that Katia's brother had played the piano like a bootmaker.

Then the toasts! They drank twice to everybody in the room, and the men kissed the hands of the women as well as clinking glasses with them.