. yes, . . ." answered Yegorushka, sobbing.

"Well, you'd better go back then. Anyway, you are going for nothing;
it's a day's journey for a spoonful of porridge."

"Never mind, never mind, my boy," Father Christopher went on. "Call
upon God. . . . Lomonosov set off with the fishermen in the same
way, and he became a man famous all over Europe. Learning in
conjunction with faith brings forth fruit pleasing to God. What are
the words of the prayer? For the glory of our Maker, for the comfort
of our parents, for the benefit of our Church and our country. . . .
Yes, indeed!"

"The benefit is not the same in all cases," said Kuzmitchov, lighting
a cheap cigar; "some will study twenty years and get no sense from
it."

"That does happen."

"Learning is a benefit to some, but others only muddle their brains.
My sister is a woman who does not understand; she is set upon
refinement, and wants to turn Yegorka into a learned man, and she
does not understand that with my business I could settle Yegorka
happily for the rest of his life. I tell you this, that if everyone
were to go in for being learned and refined there would be no one
to sow the corn and do the trading; they would all die of hunger."

"And if all go in for trading and sowing corn there will be no one
to acquire learning."

And considering that each of them had said something weighty and
convincing, Kuzmitchov and Father Christopher both looked serious
and cleared their throats simultaneously.

Deniska, who had been listening to their conversation without
understanding a word of it, shook his head and, rising in his seat,
lashed at both the bays. A silence followed.

Meanwhile a wide boundless plain encircled by a chain of low hills
lay stretched before the travellers' eyes. Huddling together and
peeping out from behind one another, these hills melted together
into rising ground, which stretched right to the very horizon and
disappeared into the lilac distance; one drives on and on and cannot
discern where it begins or where it ends. . . . The sun had already
peeped out from beyond the town behind them, and quietly, without
fuss, set to its accustomed task. At first in the distance before
them a broad, bright, yellow streak of light crept over the ground
where the earth met the sky, near the little barrows and the
windmills, which in the distance looked like tiny men waving their
arms. A minute later a similar streak gleamed a little nearer, crept
to the