could be heard but
the metallic click of the censer and slow singing.... Near Andrey
Andreyitch stood the verger Matvey, the midwife Makaryevna, and her
one-armed son Mitka. There was no one else. The sacristan sang badly in
an unpleasant, hollow bass, but the tune and the words were so mournful
that the shopkeeper little by little lost the expression of dignity and
was plunged in sadness. He thought of his Mashutka,... he remembered
she had been born when he was still a lackey in the service of the owner
of Verhny Zaprudy. In his busy life as a lackey he had not noticed
how his girl had grown up. That long period during which she was being
shaped into a graceful creature, with a little flaxen head and dreamy
eyes as big as kopeck-pieces passed unnoticed by him. She had been
brought up like all the children of favorite lackeys, in ease and
comfort in the company of the young ladies. The gentry, to fill up their
idle time, had taught her to read, to write, to dance; he had had no
hand in her bringing up. Only from time to time casually meeting her at
the gate or on the landing of the stairs, he would remember that she was
his daughter, and would, so far as he had leisure for it, begin teaching
her the prayers and the scripture. Oh, even then he had the reputation
of an authority on the church rules and the holy scriptures! Forbidding
and stolid as her father's face was, yet the girl listened readily. She
repeated the prayers after him yawning, but on the other hand, when he,
hesitating and trying to express himself elaborately, began telling her
stories, she was all attention. Esau's pottage, the punishment of Sodom,
and the troubles of the boy Joseph made her turn pale and open her blue
eyes wide.

Afterwards when he gave up being a lackey, and with the money he had
saved opened a shop in the village, Mashutka had gone away to Moscow
with his master's family....

Three years before her death she had come to see her father. He had
scarcely recognized her. She was a graceful young woman with the manners
of a young lady, and dressed like one. She talked cleverly, as though
from a book, smoked, and slept till midday. When Andrey Andreyitch asked
her what she was doing, she had announced, looking him boldly straight
in the face: "I am an actress." Such frankness struck the former flunkey
as the acme of cynicism. Mashutka had begun boasting of her successes
and her stage life; but seeing that her father only turned crimson