“ Ma chère , there is a time for everything,” said the countess with feigned severity. “You spoil her, Ilyá,” she added, turning to her husband.

“How do you do, my dear? I wish you many happy returns of your name day,” said the visitor. “What a charming child,” she added, addressing the mother.

This black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life⁠—with childish bare shoulders which after her run heaved and shook her bodice, with black curls tossed backward, thin bare arms, little legs in lace-frilled drawers, and feet in low slippers⁠—was just at that charming age when a girl is no longer a child, though the child is not yet a young woman. Escaping from her father she ran to hide her flushed face in the lace of her mother’s mantilla⁠—not paying the least attention to her severe remark⁠—and began to laugh. She laughed, and in fragmentary sentences tried to explain about a doll which she produced from the folds of her frock.