“I suppose the ladies have been besieging our poor Abramka?”
“I really can’t tell you. So far as I am concerned, I have scarcely looked at what he made for me.”
“Hm, how’s that? Didn’t you order your dress from Moscow again?”
“No, it really does not pay. I am sick of the bother of it all. Why all that trouble? For whom? Our officers don’t care a bit how one dresses. They haven’t the least taste.”
“Hm, there’s something back of that,” thought Mrs. Shaldin.
The captain’s wife continued with apparent indifference:
“I can guess what a gorgeous dress you had made abroad. Certainly in the latest fashion?”
“I?” Mrs. Shaldin laughed innocently. “How could I get the time during my cure to think of a dress? As a matter of fact, I completely forgot the ball, thought of it at the last moment, and bought the first piece of goods I laid my hands on.”
“Pink?”
“Oh, no. How can you say pink!”