For several days before, Darya Alexandrovna was busily deliberating on how to dress all the children.  Frocks were made or altered and washed, seams and flounces were let out, buttons were sewn on, and ribbons got ready.  One dress, Tanya’s, which the English governess had undertaken, cost Darya Alexandrovna much loss of temper.  The English governess in altering it had made the seams in the wrong place, had taken up the sleeves too much, and altogether spoilt the dress.  It was so narrow on Tanya’s shoulders that it was quite painful to look at her.  But Marya Philimonovna had the happy thought of putting in gussets, and adding a little shoulder-cape.  The dress was set right, but there was nearly a quarrel with the English governess.  On the morning, however, all was happily arranged, and towards ten o’clock—­the time at which they had asked the priest to wait for them for the mass—­the children in their new dresses, with beaming faces, stood on the step before the carriage waiting for their mother.

To the carriage, instead of the restive Raven, they had harnessed, thanks to the representations of Marya Philimonovna, the bailiff’s horse, Brownie, and Darya Alexandrovna, delayed by anxiety over her own attire, came out and got in, dressed in a white muslin gown.

Darya Alexandrovna had done her hair, and dressed with care and excitement.  In the old days she had dressed for her own sake to look pretty and be admired.  Later on, as she got older, dress became more and more distasteful to her.  She saw that she was losing her good looks.  But now she began to feel pleasure and interest in dress again.  Now she did not dress for her own sake, not for the sake of her own beauty, but simply that as the mother of those exquisite creatures she might not spoil the general effect.  And looking at herself for the last time in the looking-glass she was satisfied with herself.  She looked nice.  Not nice as she would have wished to look nice in old days at a ball, but nice for the object which she now had in view.

In the church there was no one but the peasants, the servants and their women-folk.  But Darya Alexandrovna saw, or fancied she saw, the sensation produced by her children and her.  The children were not only beautiful to look at in their smart little dresses, but they were charming in the way they behaved.  Aliosha, it is true, did not stand quite correctly; he kept turning round, trying to look at his little jacket from behind; but all the same he was wonderfully sweet.  Tanya behaved like a grownup person, and looked after the little ones.  And the smallest, Lily, was bewitching in her naive astonishment at everything, and it was difficult not to smile when, after taking the sacrament, she said in English, “Please, some more.”

On the way home the children felt that something solemn had happened, and were very sedate.