a! The next day he was softer. 'Don't you bear malice
against me for my words, Makaritch,' he said. 'If I said too much,' says
he, 'what of it? I am a merchant of the first guild, your superior--you
ought to hold your tongue.' 'You,' said I, 'are a merchant of the first
guild and I am a carpenter, that's correct. And Saint Joseph was a
carpenter, too. Ours is a righteous calling and pleasing to God, and if
you are pleased to be my superior you are very welcome to it, Vassily
Danilitch.' And later on, after that conversation I mean, I thought:
'Which was the superior? A merchant of the first guild or a carpenter?'
The carpenter must be, my child!"

Crutch thought a minute and added:

"Yes, that's how it is, child. He who works, he who is patient is the
superior."

By now the sun had set and a thick mist as white as milk was rising over
the river, in the church enclosure, and in the open spaces round the
factories. Now when the darkness was coming on rapidly, when lights were
twinkling below, and when it seemed as though the mists were hiding
a fathomless abyss, Lipa and her mother who were born in poverty and
prepared to live so till the end, giving up to others everything except
their frightened, gentle souls, may have fancied for a minute perhaps
that in the vast, mysterious world, among the endless series of lives,
they, too, counted for something, and they, too, were superior to
someone; they liked sitting here at the top, they smiled happily and
forgot that they must go down below again all the same.

At last they went home again. The mowers were sitting on the ground at
the gates near the shop. As a rule the Ukleevo peasants did not go
to Tsybukin's to work, and they had to hire strangers, and now in the
darkness it seemed as though there were men sitting there with long
black beards. The shop was open, and through the doorway they could
see the deaf man playing draughts with a boy. The mowers were singing
softly, scarcely audibly, or loudly demanding their wages for the
previous day, but they were not paid for fear they should go away before
to-morrow. Old Tsybukin, with his coat off, was sitting in his waistcoat
with Aksinya under the birch-tree, drinking tea; a lamp was burning on
the table.

"I say, grandfather," a mower called from outside the gates, as though
taunting him, "pay us half anyway! Hey, grandfather."

And at once there was the sound of laughter, and then again they sang
hardly audibly.... C