Hearing Anna's voice, a smart, tall, English nurse with a

disagreeable face and a dissolute expression walked in at the

door, hurriedly shaking her fair curls, and immediately began to

defend herself though Anna had not found fault with her. At

every word Anna said, the English nurse said hurriedly several

times, "Yes, my lady."

The rosy baby with her black eyebrows and hair, her sturdy red

little body with tight goose-flesh skin, delighted Darya

Alexandrovna in spite of the cross expression with which she

stared at the stranger. She positively envied the baby's healthy

appearance. She was delighted, too, at the baby's crawling. Not

one of her own children had crawled like that. When the baby was

put on the carpet and its little dress tucked up behind, it was

wonderfully charming. Looking round like some little wild animal

at the grown-up big people with her bright black eyes, she

smiled, unmistakably pleased at their admiring her, and holding

her legs sideways, she pressed vigorously on her arms, and

rapidly drew her whole back up after, and then made another step

forward with her little arms.

But the whole atmosphere of the nursery, and especially the

English nurse, Darya Alexandrovna did not like at all. It was

only on the supposition that no good nurse would have entered so

irregular a household as Anna's that Darya Alexandrovna could

explain to herself how Anna with her insight into people could

take such an unprepossessing, disreputable-looking woman as nurse

to her child.

Besides, from a few words that were dropped, Darya Alexandrovna

saw at once that Anna, the two nurses, and the child had no

common existence, and that the mother's visit was something

exceptional. Anna wanted to get the baby her plaything, and

could not find it.

Most amazing of all was the fact that on being asked how many

teeth the baby had, Anna answered wrong, and knew nothing about

the two last teeth.

"I sometimes feel sorry I'm so superfluous here," said Anna,

going out of the nursery and holding up her skirt so as to escape

the plaything standing in the doorway. "It was very different

with my first child."

"I expected it to be the other way," said Darya Alexandrovna

shyly.

"Oh, no! By the way, do you know I saw Seryozha?" said Anna,

screwing up her eyes, as though looking at something far away.

"But we'll talk about that later. You wouldn't believe it, I'm

like a hungry beggar woman when a full dinner is set before her,

and she does not know what to begin on first. The dinner is you,

and the talks I have before me with you, which I could never have

with anyone else; and I don't know which subject to begin upon

first. _Mais je ne vous ferai grace de rien_. I must have

everything out with you."




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