The little girl advanced, and the countess inspected her as minutely as she had done the embroidery.
"How pretty she is! What's your name?"
"Mavra."
The word came like a breath from the rosy lips.
"You must speak louder if you want us to hear you," said the head lady's maid angrily.
Mavra turned her large, blue, startled eyes toward her, let them drop, and said nothing.
"Sit down to your work," said the countess, amused at her new toy. With a quick, graceful movement, the young girl resumed her seat on the wooden chair, and the needle, firmly held between her agile fingers, went in and out of the stuff with that short, sharp noise that stimulates the action of the hand.
"That's right, you may go on," said the countess, her nerves irritated by the regularity of the movement.
Then, turning her back upon the young girl and trailing the heavy, sumptuous folds of her dressing-gown along the carefully-washed pine-wood floor, she disappeared through the door, which was respectfully closed after her by the head lady's maid. The countess, an accomplished house-mistress, made a practice of paying a daily visit to this room, which was reserved for the women of her service. Mavra was left alone in the workroom, a large, well-lighted chamber, furnished simply with tables and chairs for the use of the innumerable women and girls invariably attached to the service of those noble ladies who knew so well how to maintain their rank in that blessed time of serfdom. At this hour the workroom was empty. Some of the women were washing, others ironing, some cleaning and turning upside down everything in the private apartment the countess had just left. The young peasant girl, with her needle uplifted, rested her ruddy hand upon the edge of the frame and looked around her.
What multitudes of embroidered gowns with their rich lace trimmings hung there on the wall, waiting some slight repairs!—what endless petticoats with their ornamented flounces all freshly ironed on cords along the huge room!—what countless lace caps, worn hardly an hour, pinned to a pincushion as large as a pillow, used only for this purpose! and there, in a basket on the corner of the table, what piles of cambric chemises, delicately piped and pleated, trimmed with Valenciennes lace and ornamented with bright ribbons! And all this for one person! without counting the silk stockings in that other basket, and the rings by dozens worn by the countess on her thin fingers. In this world of living beings under God's heaven, what importance given to one person, who needed so many other persons to serve her! And how the nothingness of these was made more emphatic by the dominance of that! Mavra sat wonder-stricken. The head lady's maid coming into the room found her still in a state of stupefaction, stupefied above all at having made these reflections.