fact think about this: she simply suffered at the sight of anger as she would from a bad smell, a harsh noise, or from blows on her body.
She had—with a feeling of self-satisfaction—just taught Lukérya how to mix the dough, when her six-year-old grandson Mísha, wearing an apron and with darned stockings on his crooked little legs, ran into the kitchen with a frightened face.
“Grandma, a dreadful old man wants to see you.”
Lukérya looked out at the door.
“There is a pilgrim of some kind, a man …”
Praskóvya Mikháylovna rubbed her thin elbows against one another, wiped her hands on her apron and went upstairs to get a five-kopeck piece out of her purse for him, but remembering that she had nothing less than a ten-kopeck piece she decided to give him some bread instead. She returned to the cupboard, but suddenly blushed at the thought of having grudged the ten-kopeck piece, and telling Lukérya to cut a slice of bread, went upstairs again to fetch it. “It serves you right,” she said to herself. “You must now give twice over.”
She gave both the bread and the money to the pilgrim, and when doing so—far from being proud of her generosity—she excused herself for giving so little. The man had such an imposing appearance.
Though he had tramped two hundred versts as a beggar, though he was tattered and had grown thin and weatherbeaten, though he had cropped his long hair and was wearing a peasant’s cap and boots, and though he bowed very humbly, Sergius still had the impressive appearance that made him so attractive. But Praskóvya Mikháylovna did not recognize him. She could hardly do so, not having seen him for almost twenty years.
“Don’t think ill of me, Father. Perhaps you want something to eat?”