Five minutes later I was sitting on a big, soft, warm lounge in the drawing-room listening to the “Ach!” echoing all down the street.  There was a smell of moth powder, and of goatskin shoes, a pair of which lay on a chair beside me wrapped in a handkerchief.  In the windows were geraniums, and muslin curtains, and on the curtains were torpid flies.  On the wall hung the portrait of some bishop, painted in oils, with the glass broken at one corner, and next to the bishop a row of ancestors with lemon-coloured faces of a gipsy type.  On the table lay a thimble, a reel of cotton, and a half-knitted stocking, and paper patterns and a black blouse, tacked together, were lying on the floor.  In the next room two alarmed and fluttered old women were hurriedly picking up similar patterns and pieces of tailor’s chalk from the floor.

“You must, please, excuse us; we are dreadfully untidy,” said the little lady.

While she talked to me, she stole embarrassed glances towards the other room where the patterns were still being picked up.  The door, too, seemed embarrassed, opening an inch or two and then shutting again.

“What’s the matter?” said the little lady, addressing the door.

"Ou est mon cravatte lequel mon pere m’avait envoye de Koursk?" asked a female voice at the door.

"Ah, est-ce que, Marie . . . que. . .  Really, it’s impossible . . . . Nous avons donc chez nous un homme peu connu de nous. Ask Lukerya.”

“How well we speak French, though!” I read in the eyes of the little lady, who was flushing with pleasure.

Soon afterwards the door opened and I saw a tall, thin girl of nineteen, in a long muslin dress with a gilt belt from which, I remember, hung a mother-of-pearl fan.  She came in, dropped a curtsy, and flushed crimson.  Her long nose, which was slightly pitted with smallpox, turned red first, and then the flush passed up to her eyes and her forehead.

“My daughter,” chanted the little lady, “and, Manetchka, this is a young gentleman who has come,” etc.

I was introduced, and expressed my surprise at the number of paper patterns.  Mother and daughter dropped their eyes.

“We had a fair here at Ascension,” said the mother; “we always buy materials at the fair, and then it keeps us busy with sewing till the next year’s fair comes around again.  We never put things out to be made.  My husband’s pay is not very ample, and we are not able to permit ourselves luxuries.  So we have to make up everything ourselves.”

“But who will ever wear such a number of things?  There are only two of you?”

“Oh . . . as though we were thinking of wearing them!  They are not to be worn; they are for the trousseau!”

“Ah, mamam, what are you saying?” said the daughter, and she crimsoned again.  “Our visitor might suppose it was true.  I don’t intend to be married.  Never!”

She said this, but at the very word “married” her eyes glowed.