“So you liked the hussars very much?” said Lisa. “And you’re a good one at telling what you’ve seen. Please, Oustúshka, go and bring some of the cranberry juice, to give the hussars something sour to drink.”
And Lisa, laughing, went out with the sugar basin.
“I should really like to have seen what that hussar is like,” she thought, “brown or fair? And he would have been glad to make our acquaintance I should think. … But he will pass and never know that I was here, and thought about him. And how many such have already passed me by? Who sees me here except uncle and Oustúshka? Whichever way I do my hair, whatever sleeves I put on, no one looks at me with pleasure,” she thought, with a sigh, as she looked at her plump, white arm; “I suppose he is tall, with large eyes, and, certainly, little black moustaches … No, I am more than twenty-two, and no one has fallen in love with me, except the pockmarked Iván Ipátitch, and I looked still better four years ago. … And so my early womanhood has passed without gladdening anyone. Oh poor, poor country lass that I am!”
Her mother’s voice, calling her to pour out the tea, roused the country lass from this momentary meditation. She lifted her head with a start and went into the tearoom.
Often the best results are obtained accidentally, and the more one tries the worse things turn out. In the country, people rarely try to educate their children, and therefore, unwittingly, usually give them an excellent education. This was particularly so in Lisa’s case. Anna Fyódorovna, with her limited intellect and careless temperament, gave Lisa no education—did not teach her music or that very useful French language—but having accidentally borne a healthy, pretty child by her deceased husband, she gave her little daughter over to a wet-nurse and a dry-nurse, fed her, dressed her in cotton prints and goatskin shoes, sent her out to walk and to gather mushrooms and wild berries, engaged a pupil of the seminary