order of the dipping, but dipped at once. When the first bowl was empty, they brought a second, full of porridge (kasha). It was followed by a bowl of boiled raisins. Ivan presided at the samovar, dispensing tea, black bread and cucumbers. It was a special feast, for this was a special holiday in Spasskoye.
Even the crows seemed to be aware of it. Great flocks wheeling overhead threw swift cloud-shadows across the ground, or alighted on the church roof and covered it completely. The domes, all green or glistening gold, would in a minute be blackest jet.
I told Ivan that in America farmers killed crows because they ate the grain.
"Yes," said Ivan, "our crows eat the grain. But they eat the field-mice, too. And even if they are crows, they are like us and want to live."
Tatyana held a like attitude toward the flies that swarmed around the table. Descending on a piece of sugar they would turn it as black as the crowcovered church.
"Never mind the flies," said Tatyana. "Poor things, in a month or two they'll be dead, anyhow."
The Village Takes
a Holiday.
It was the Feast of Transfiguration, and from all the countryside around came the poor, the crippled and the aged. Again and again we heard the tapping of a cane and a plaintive voice asking alms radi Christa, for the Christ's sake.
