care enough of him, you silly
girl...."

There was a requiem service in the morning and the evening. The funeral
took place the next day, and after it the guests and the priests ate a
great deal, and with such greed that one might have thought that they
had not tasted food for a long time. Lipa waited at table, and the
priest, lifting his fork on which there was a salted mushroom, said to
her:

"Don't grieve for the babe. For of such is the kingdom of heaven."

And only when they had all separated Lipa realized fully that there was
no Nikifor and never would be, she realized it and broke into sobs. And
she did not know what room to go into to sob, for she felt that now that
her child was dead there was no place for her in the house, that she had
no reason to be here, that she was in the way; and the others felt it,
too.

"Now what are you bellowing for?" Aksinya shouted, suddenly appearing in
the doorway; in honour of the funeral she was dressed all in new clothes
and had powdered her face. "Shut up!"

Lipa tried to stop but could not, and sobbed louder than ever.

"Do you hear?" shouted Aksinya, and she stamped her foot in violent
anger. "Who is it I am speaking to? Go out of the yard and don't set
foot here again, you convict's wife. Get away."

"There, there, there," the old man put in fussily. "Aksinya, don't make
such an outcry, my girl.... She is crying, it is only natural... her
child is dead...."

"'It's only natural,'" Aksinya mimicked him. "Let her stay the night
here, and don't let me see a trace of her here to-morrow! 'It's only
natural!'..." she mimicked him again, and, laughing, she went into the
shop.

Early the next morning Lipa went off to her mother at Torguevo.

IX

At the present time the steps and the front door of the shop have been
repainted and are as bright as though they were new, there are gay
geraniums in the windows as of old, and what happened in Tsybukin's
house and yard three years ago is almost forgotten.

Grigory Petrovitch is looked upon as the master as he was in old days,
but in reality everything has passed into Aksinya's hands; she buys and
sells, and nothing can be done without her consent. The brickyard is
working well; and as bricks are wanted for the railway the price has
gone up to twenty-four roubles a thousand; peasant women and girls cart
the bricks to the station and load them up in the trucks and earn a
quarter-rouble a day for the work.

Aksinya has gon