“Why, Father, your beard is green!” exclaimed Kitty suddenly. And she burst out laughing.
The bishop remembered that the colour of Father Sisoi’s beard really did verge on green, and he, too, laughed.
“My goodness! What a plague that child is!” cried Father Sisoi in a loud voice, for he was growing angry. “You’re a spoiled baby you are! Sit still!”
The bishop recalled the new white church in which he had officiated when he was abroad, and the sound of a warm sea. Eight years had slipped by while he was there; then he had been recalled to Russia, and now he was already a bishop, and the past had faded away into mist as if it had been but a dream.
Father Sisoi came into his room with a candle in his hand.
“Well, well!” he exclaimed, surprised. “Asleep already, your Reverence?”
“Why not?”
“It’s early yet, only ten o’clock! I bought a candle this evening and wanted to rub you with tallow.”
“I have a fever,” the bishop said, sitting up. “I suppose something ought to be done. My head feels so queer.”
Sisoi began to rub the bishop’s chest and back with tallow.