ed twenty; it's no joke."

Every one in the house knew that red-haired Masha was in love with
Mishenka, the footman, and this genuine, passionate, hopeless love
had already lasted three years.

"Come, don't talk nonsense," Anna Akimovna consoled her. "I am going
on for thirty, but I am still meaning to marry a young man."

While his mistress was dressing, Mishenka, in a new swallow-tail
and polished boots, walked about the hall and drawing-room and
waited for her to come out, to wish her a happy Christmas. He had
a peculiar walk, stepping softly and delicately; looking at his
feet, his hands, and the bend of his head, it might be imagined
that he was not simply walking, but learning to dance the first
figure of a quadrille. In spite of his fine velvety moustache and
handsome, rather flashy appearance, he was steady, prudent, and
devout as an old man. He said his prayers, bowing down to the ground,
and liked burning incense in his room. He respected people of wealth
and rank and had a reverence for them; he despised poor people, and
all who came to ask favours of any kind, with all the strength of
his cleanly flunkey soul. Under his starched shirt he wore a flannel,
winter and summer alike, being very careful of his health; his ears
were plugged with cotton-wool.

When Anna Akimovna crossed the hall with Masha, he bent his head
downwards a little and said in his agreeable, honeyed voice:

"I have the honour to congratulate you, Anna Akimovna, on the most
solemn feast of the birth of our Lord."

Anna Akimovna gave him five roubles, while poor Masha was numb with
ecstasy. His holiday get-up, his attitude, his voice, and what he
said, impressed her by their beauty and elegance; as she followed
her mistress she could think of nothing, could see nothing, she
could only smile, first blissfully and then bitterly. The upper
story of the house was called the best or visitors' half, while the
name of the business part--old people's or simply women's part
--was given to the rooms on the lower story where Aunt Tatyana
Ivanovna kept house. In the upper part the gentry and educated
visitors were entertained; in the lower story, simpler folk and the
aunt's personal friends. Handsome, plump, and healthy, still young
and fresh, and feeling she had on a magnificent dress which seemed
to her to diffuse a sort of radiance all about her, Anna Akimovna
went down to the lower story. Here she was met with reproaches for
forgetting God n