“Come, don’t talk nonsense,” Anna Akimovna consoled her.  “I am going on for thirty, but I am still meaning to marry a young man.”

While his mistress was dressing, Mishenka, in a new swallow-tail and polished boots, walked about the hall and drawing-room and waited for her to come out, to wish her a happy Christmas.  He had a peculiar walk, stepping softly and delicately; looking at his feet, his hands, and the bend of his head, it might be imagined that he was not simply walking, but learning to dance the first figure of a quadrille.  In spite of his fine velvety moustache and handsome, rather flashy appearance, he was steady, prudent, and devout as an old man.  He said his prayers, bowing down to the ground, and liked burning incense in his room.  He respected people of wealth and rank and had a reverence for them; he despised poor people, and all who came to ask favours of any kind, with all the strength of his cleanly flunkey soul.  Under his starched shirt he wore a flannel, winter and summer alike, being very careful of his health; his ears were plugged with cotton-wool.

When Anna Akimovna crossed the hall with Masha, he bent his head downwards a little and said in his agreeable, honeyed voice: 

“I have the honour to congratulate you, Anna Akimovna, on the most solemn feast of the birth of our Lord.”

Anna Akimovna gave him five roubles, while poor Masha was numb with ecstasy.  His holiday get-up, his attitude, his voice, and what he said, impressed her by their beauty and elegance; as she followed her mistress she could think of nothing, could see nothing, she could only smile, first blissfully and then bitterly.  The upper story of the house was called the best or visitors’ half, while the name of the business part—­old people’s or simply women’s part —­was given to the rooms on the lower story where Aunt Tatyana Ivanovna kept house.  In the upper part the gentry and educated visitors were entertained; in the lower story, simpler folk and the aunt’s personal friends.  Handsome, plump, and healthy, still young and fresh, and feeling she had on a magnificent dress which seemed to her to diffuse a sort of radiance all about her, Anna Akimovna went down to the lower story.  Here she was met with reproaches for forgetting God now that she was so highly educated, for sleeping too late for the service, and for not coming downstairs to break the fast, and they all clasped their hands and exclaimed with perfect sincerity that she was lovely, wonderful; and she believed it, laughed, kissed them, gave one a rouble, another three or five according to their position.  She liked being downstairs.  Wherever one looked there were shrines, ikons, little lamps, portraits of ecclesiastical personages—­the place smelt of monks; there was a rattle of knives in the kitchen, and already a smell of something savoury, exceedingly appetizing, was pervading all the rooms.  The yellow-painted floors shone, and from the doors narrow rugs with bright blue stripes ran like little paths to the ikon corner, and the sunshine was simply pouring in at the windows.