Varvara was awakened.  She clasped her hands and broke into sobs, and immediately began laying out the baby.

“And he was a pretty child...” she said.  “Oh, dear, dear....  You only had the one child, and you did not take 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 gone into partnership with the Hrymin Juniors, and their factory is now called Hrymin Juniors and Co.  They have opened a tavern near the station, and now the expensive concertina is played not at the factory but at the tavern, and the head of the post office often goes there, and he, too, is engaged in some sort of traffic, and the stationmaster, too.  Hrymin Juniors have presented the deaf man Stepan with a gold watch, and he is constantly taking it out of his pocket and putting it to his ear.