"Mercy! Your new white frock! Tanya! Grisha!" said their

mother, trying to save the frock, but with tears in her eyes,

smiling a blissful, rapturous smile.

The new frocks were taken off, and orders were given for the

little girls to have their blouses put on, and the boys their old

jackets, and the wagonette to be harnessed; with Brownie, to the

bailiff's annoyance, again in the shafts, to drive out for

mushroom picking and bathing. A roar of delighted shrieks arose

in the nursery, and never ceased till they had set off for the

bathing-place.

They gathered a whole basketful of mushrooms; even Lily found a

birch mushroom. It had always happened before that Miss Hoole

found them and pointed them out to her; but this time she found a

big one quite of herself, and there was a general scream of

delight, "Lily has found a mushroom!"

Then they reached the river, put the horses under the birch

trees, and went to the bathing-place. The coachman, Terenty,

fastened the horses, who kept whisking away the flies, to a tree,

and, treading down the grass, lay down in the shade of a birch

and smoked his shag, while the never-ceasing shrieks of delight

of the children floated across to him from the bathing-place.

Though it was hard work to look after all the children and

restrain their wild pranks, though it was difficult too to keep

in one's head and not mix up all the stockings, little breeches,

and shoes for the different legs, and to undo and to do up again

all the tapes and buttons, Darya Alexandrovna, who had always

liked bathing herself, and believed it to be very good for the

children, enjoyed nothing so much as bathing with all the

children. To go over all those fat little legs, pulling on their

stockings, to take in her arms and dip those little naked bodies,

and to hear their screams of delight and alarm, to see the

breathless faces with wide-open, scared, and happy eyes of all

her splashing cherubs, was a great pleasure to her.

When half the children had been dressed, some peasant women in

holiday dress, out picking herbs, came up to the bathing-shed and

stopped shyly. Marya Philimonovna called one of them and handed

her a sheet and a shirt that had dropped into the water for her

to dry them, and Darya Alexandrovna began to talk to the women.

At first they laughed behind their hands and did not understand

her questions, but soon they grew bolder and began to talk,

winning Darya Alexandrovna's heart at once by the genuine

admiration of the children that they showed.




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