vestibule did he become abashed. For a long time they stood in the anteroom, the old master in his full blue cloak, and the volunteer in a short fur coat, his eyebrows raised and his eyes staring. For a long time they whispered, asked to be allowed to go somewhere or other, looked for somebody or other, and for some reason took off their caps and bowed to every scrivener they met, and meditatively listened to the decisions read out by a scrivener whom the master knew. All hope of getting the business done that day began to vanish, and the volunteer was growing more cheerful and unconstrained again, when Doútlof saw Egór Miháylovitch, seized on him at once, and began to beg and bow to him.
Egór Miháylovitch helped him so efficiently that by about three o’clock, to his great dissatisfaction and surprise, the volunteer was taken into the hall and placed for examination, and amid general merriment (in which for some reason everybody joined, from the watchmen to the President), he was undressed, dressed again, shaved, and let out at the door; and five minutes later Doútlof counted out the money, received the receipt, and, having taken leave of the volunteer and his master, went to the lodging-house where the Pokróvsk recruits were staying.
Elijah and his young wife were sitting in a corner of the kitchen; and as soon as the old man came in they stopped talking, and looked at him with a resigned expression, but not with goodwill. As was his wont, the old man said a prayer; and he then unfastened his girdle, got out a paper, and called into the room his eldest son Ignát and Elijah’s mother, who was in the yard.
“Don’t go sinning, Elijah,” he said, coming up to his nephew. “The other day you said a word to me. … Don’t I care about you? I remember how my brother left you to me. If it were in my power, would I have let you go? God has sent me luck, and I am not grudging it you. … Here it is, the paper”; and he put the receipt on the table, and carefully smoothed it out with his stiff, crooked fingers.