"Where did she get so many corn stalks?"
"She laid in a store last summer," was the answer. "She stole some every day from the fields!"
Several moustacheless officials, who were in love with Goudayevskaya, and who had therefore been told by her how she would be dressed, accompanied her. They collected cards for her—rudely and almost by force. They simply took them away from some who were not very bold. There were other masked women who were zealously collecting cards through their cavaliers. Others looked greedily at the cards which had not yet been given up, and asked for them. These received impertinent answers. One dejected woman, dressed as Night—in a blue costume with a glass star and a paper moon on her forehead—said timidly to Mourin:
"Do give me your card."
Mourin replied rudely:
"What d'you mean? Give you my card? I don't like your mug!"
Night muttered something angrily and walked away. She only wanted two or three cards to show at home, to prove that she had received some. Modest desires often go unsatisfied.
The schoolmistress, Skobotchkina, dressed herself as a she-bear, that is, she simply threw a bearskin cross her shoulders and put on a bear's head as a helmet over the usual half-mask. This was generally speaking shapeless, but it suited her stout figure and stentorian voice. The bear walked with heavy footsteps, and bellowed so loudly that the lights in the lustres trembled. Many people liked the bear, and she received quite a number of tickets. She was unable to keep the cards herself, and had not found a clever cavalier like others of the ladies; more than half of her tickets were stolen when she was being given vodka by some of the small tradesmen—they had a fellow-feeling for her sudden ability to display bearish manners. People in the crowd shouted out:
"Look how the bear swigs vodka!"
Skobotchkina could not decide to refuse vodka. It seemed to her that a she-bear should drink vodka when it was brought to her.