hter of a dignitary. If their
marriage should come to pass, Telimena would have a refuge for the future
in their home, being kin to Zosia and the one who secured her for the
Count; she would be like a mother for the young couple.

After this decisive consultation, held with herself, she called from the
window to Zosia, who was playing in the garden.

Zosia was standing bareheaded in her morning gown, holding a sieve aloft
in her hands; the barnyard fowls were running to her feet. From one side
the rough-feathered hens came rolling like balls of yarn; from the other
the crested cocks, shaking the coral helms upon their heads and oaring
themselves with their wings over the furrows and through the bushes,
stretched out broadly their spurred feet; behind them slowly advanced a
puffed-up turkey cock, fretting at the complaints of his garrulous spouse;
there the peacocks, like rafts, steered themselves over the meadow with
their long tails, and here and there a silver-winged dove would fall from
on high like a tassel of snow. In the middle of the circle of greensward
extended a noisy, moving circle of birds, girt round with a belt of doves,
like a white ribbon, mottled with stars, spots, and stripes. Here amber
beaks and there coral crests rose from the thick mass of feathers like
fish from the waves. Their necks were thrust forward and with soft
movements continually wavered to and fro like water lilies; a thousand
eyes like stars glittered upon Zosia.

In the centre, raised high above the birds, white herself, and dressed in
a long white gown, she turned about like a fountain playing amid flowers.
She took from the sieve and scattered over the wings and heads, with a
hand white as pearls, a dense pearly hail of barley grains: it was grain
worthy of a lord's table, and was made for thickening the Lithuanian
broths; by stealing it from the pantry cupboard for her poultry Zosia did
damage to the housekeeping.

She heard the call "Zosia"--that was her aunt's voice! She sprinkled out
all at once to the birds the remnant of the dainties, and twirling the
sieve as a dancer a tambourine and beating it rhythmically, the playful
maiden began to skip over the peacocks, the doves, and the hens. The
birds, disturbed, fluttered up in a throng. Zosia, hardly touching the
ground with her feet, seemed to tower high above them; before her the
white doves, which she startled in her course, flew as before the chariot
of the goddess of love.