Why speak in whispers, pray?
All this they don't dare say before people in the tavern, for example.

What is it, I ask?
A secret?
The secret place is our holy church, as old as the apostles.

All the other secrets hatched in the corners are the offspring of delusions.

I wish you good health." Raising his hand in an affected manner, he lifted his cap, and waving it in the air, walked away, leaving the mother to her perplexity.
Vlasova's neighbor, Marya Korsunova, the blacksmith's widow, who sold food at the factory, on meeting the mother in the market place also said to her: "Look out for your son, Pelagueya!" "What's the matter ?" "They're talking!" Marya tendered the information in a hushed voice.
"And they don't say any good, mother of mine! They speak as if he's getting up a sort of union, something like those Flagellants--sects, that's the name! They'll whip one another like the Flagellants----" "Stop babbling nonsense, Marya! Enough!" "I'm not babbling nonsense! I talk because I know." The mother communicated all these conversations to her son.

He shrugged his shoulders in silence, and the Little Russian laughed with his thick, soft laugh.
"The girls also have a crow to pick with you!" she said.