Father Christopher, without haste, blessed Yegorushka.
'In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. . . . Study,' he said. 'Work hard, my lad. If I die, remember me in your prayers. Here is a ten-kopeck piece from me, too. . . .'
Yegorushka kissed his hand, and shed tears; something whispered in his heart that he would never see the old man again.
'I have applied at the high school already,' said Ivan Ivanitch in a voice as though there were a corpse in the room. 'You will take him for the entrance examination on the seventh of August. . . . Well, good-bye; God bless you, good-bye, Yegor!'
'You might at least have had a cup of tea,' wailed Nastasya Petrovna.
Through the tears that filled his eyes Yegorushka could not see his uncle and Father Christopher go out. He rushed to the window, but they were not in the yard, and the red dog, who had just been barking, was running back from the gate with the air of having done his duty. When Yegorushka ran out of the gate Ivan Ivanitch and Father Christopher, the former waving his stick with the crook, the latter his staff, were just turning the corner. Yegorushka felt that with these people all that he had known till then had vanished from him for ever. He sank helplessly on to the little bench, and with bitter tears greeted the new unknown life that was beginning for him now. . . .
What would that life be like?
