whom she looks like! She really reminds me of somebody. But Eduárd Karlých—isn’t he good! I didn’t know him! And how he dances. Dear me, there’s a Circassian. Really, how becoming it is to dear Sonyúshka. And who is that? Well, you have cheered us up! Nikíta and Vanya—clear away the tables! And we were sitting so quietly. Ha, ha, ha! … The hussar, the hussar! Just like a boy! And the legs! … I can’t look at him …” different voices were saying.
Natásha, the young Melyukóvs’ favorite, disappeared with them into the back rooms where a cork and various dressing gowns and male garments were called for and received from the footman by bare girlish arms from behind the door.
Ten minutes later, all the young Melyukóvs joined the mummers.
Pelagéya Danílovna, having given orders to clear the rooms for the visitors and arranged about refreshments for the gentry and the serfs, went about among the mummers without removing her spectacles, peering into their faces with a suppressed smile and failing to recognize any of them. It was not merely Dimmler and the Rostóvs she failed to recognize, she did not even recognize her own daughters, or her late husband’s dressing gowns and uniforms, which they had put on.
“And who is this?” she asked her governess, peering into the face of her own daughter dressed up as a Kazán-Tartar. “I suppose it is one of the Rostóvs! Well, Mr. Hussar, and what regiment do you serve in?” she asked Natásha.
“Here, hand some fruit jelly to the Turk!” she ordered the butler who was handing things round. “That’s not forbidden by his law.”
Sometimes, as she looked at the strange