"Surely, not about me . . . my mother died long ago."
"Don't tell me that! Majkowska knows you and your mother well and saw you together on Marshalkowska Street the other day."
"Majkowska ought to buy herself a pair of glasses, if she's so blind as that . . . I was going downtown with the housekeeper."
The other girls began to laugh at her. The one who had denied her mother blew out her candle and left in irritation.
"She's ashamed of her own mother. That's true, but such a mother! . . ."
"A plain peasant woman. She compromises her before everybody. . . .
At least, she could refrain from making a show before other people!"
"How so? Can a girl be ashamed of her mother? . . ." cried Janina, who had been sitting in silence, until those last words stirred her to indignation.
"You are a newcomer, so you don't know anything," several answered her at once.
"May I come in? . . ." called a masculine voice from without.
"You can't! you can't!" chorused the girls energetically.