‘Waiting to see the King come out, Sir.’
‘Well, I’m the King. Are you satisfied with me?’
‘God keep you, Sir,’ said the lad simply; ‘I had thought to see you more bravely dressed.’
The King laughed. ‘That’s for the men of Sliven,’ he said. Then he leaned down and shook hands with Todor, and was off.
Todor stood rooted to the spot. He had seen the King, and picked up his riding-whip, had talked with him and shaken hands!
That was adventure enough for one day. He spent the afternoon in the vacant lot behind the cottage, telling the boys of the neighborhood about it.
One day, with a feeling of awe, Todor came in sight of a great white church with gilded domes. It was all perfectly new, without a stain of soot or age, and its marble and gold glistened in the sunlight under the hot blue sky. Inside, the walls and ceilings were covered with great paintings and mosaics. Todor tiptoed over the polished marble floors, subdued by the lofty grandeur of the place; yet he did not feel like saying his prayers in it. It was all so new that it seemed to him as though God had not yet got used to it.
On his way home, passing a dusty square, he turned in at a gateway in a wall to see what might be behind it. To his surprise he found himself in a large, quiet courtyard, on one side of which was a tiny low church. It was so low that the roof came down almost to the ground, with only a row of small windows below the eaves. Through a covered porch, steps led downward to the church, which was mostly underground.
Todor knew that it had been built long ago when the Turks had first come into the land and had made it unlawful for Christians to build their churches more than a few feet high. There were churches like that all over Bulgaria. Often, because the people were forbidden to make the exteriors beautiful, they put all the more loving thought inside. So in this little church there were a beautiful screen of carved wood, lovely lamps and soft, faded hangings on the walls. The stones of the floor were worn by the knees of many generations.
The little church was empty now, and dusky in the waning light. Todor, feeling at home there, knelt in a dim corner. An old man came in, moved about and went out shutting the door behind him; but until Todor got up to go, he did not realize that the old man was the sexton, and that he had locked the church for the night and gone home for his supper.