sends them. Perhaps they may be of use. I haven’t anything else—if I had had, I would have jumped out of my shirt with joy!”
The Bride bowed and thanked him. She was ironing a curtain, sent by Tikhon Ilitch “in lieu of a veil,” and her eyes were wet and red. Syery tried to comfort her, saying that things weren’t honey-sweet with him, either; but he hesitated, sighed, and, placing the kettles on the windowsill, went away. “I have put the thread in the littlest kettle,” he mumbled.
“Thanks, batiushka ,” the Bride thanked him once more, in that same kindly and special tone which she had used only toward Ivanushka; and the moment Syery was gone she suddenly indulged in a faint ironic smile and began to sing:
“When in our little garden …”
Kuzma thrust his head out of the hall and looked sternly at her over the top of his eyeglasses. She subsided into silence.
“Listen to me,” said Kuzma. “Perhaps you would like to drop this whole business?”
“It’s too late, now,” replied the Bride in a low voice. “As it is, one can’t get rid of the disgrace. Doesn’t everybody know whose money will pay for the feast? And we have already begun to spend it.”
Kuzma shrugged his shoulders. It was true: Tikhon Ilitch, along with the window-curtain, had sent twenty-five rubles, a sack of fine wheaten flour, millet, a skinny pig. But there was no reason why she should ruin her life simply because they had already killed the pig!
“Okh!” said Kuzma. “How you have tortured me! ‘Disgraced’! ‘we’ve spent it’—Are you cheaper than the pig?”