“Don’t trouble about wiping your feet.  I’ll rub it off myself.  It’s all in the day’s work.  Come in and sit down,” said Avdyeeich.  “Here, take a cup of tea.”

And Avdyeeich filled two cups, and gave one to his guest, and he poured his own tea out into the saucer and began to blow it.

Stepanuich drank his cup, turned it upside down, put a gnawed crust on the top of it, and said, “Thank you.”  But it was quite plain that he wanted to be asked to have some more.

“Have a drop more.  Do!” said Avdyeeich, and poured out fresh cups for his guest and himself, and as Avdyeeich drank his cup, he could not help glancing at the window from time to time.

“Dost thou expect any one?” asked his guest.

“Do I expect any one?  Well, honestly, I hardly know.  I am expecting and I am not expecting, and there’s a word which has burnt itself right into my heart.  Whether it was a vision or no, I know not.  Look now, my brother!  I was reading yesterday about our little Father Christ, how He suffered, how He came on earth.  Hast thou heard of Him, eh?”

“I have heard, I have heard,” replied Stepanuich, “but we poor ignorant ones know not our letters.”

“Anyhow, I was reading about this very thing—­how He came down upon earth.  I was reading how He went to the Pharisee, and how the Pharisee did not meet Him half-way.  That was what I was reading about yesternight, little brother mine.  I read that very thing, and bethought me how the Honorable did not receive our little Father Christ honorably.  But suppose, I thought, if He came to one like me—­would I receive Him?  Simon at any rate did not receive Him at all.  Thus I thought, and so thinking, fell asleep.  I fell asleep, I say, little brother mine, and I heard my name called.  I started up.  A voice was whispering at my very ear.  ‘Look out to-morrow!’ it said, ‘I am coming.’  And so it befell twice.  Now look! wouldst thou believe it? the idea stuck to me—­I scold myself for my folly, and yet I look for Him, our little Father Christ!”

Stepanuich shook his head and said nothing, but he drank his cup dry and put it aside.  Then Avdyeeich took up the cup and filled it again.

“Drink some more.  ’Twill do thee good.  Now it seems to me that when our little Father went about on earth, He despised no one, but sought unto the simple folk most of all.  He was always among the simple folk.  Those disciples of His too, He chose most of them from amongst our brother-laborers, sinners like unto us.  He that exalteth himself, He says, shall be abased, and he that abaseth himself shall be exalted.  Ye, says He, call me Lord, and I, says He, wash your feet.  He who would be the first among you, He says, let him become the servant of all.  And therefore it is that He says, Blessed are the lowly, the peacemakers, the humble, and the long-suffering.”

Stepanuich forgot his tea.  He was an old man, soft-hearted, and tearful.  He sat and listened, and the tears rolled down his cheeks.