Page 579 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

believed it to be very good for the children, enjoyed
nothing so much as bathing with all the children. To go
over all those fat little legs, pulling on their stockings, to
take in her arms and dip those little naked bodies, and to

hear their screams of delight and alarm, to see the
breathless faces with wide-open, scared, and happy eyes of
all her splashing cherubs, was a great pleasure to her.
When half the children had been dressed, some peasant
women in holiday dress, out picking herbs, came up to the
bathing-shed and stopped shyly. Marya Philimonovna
called one of them and handed her a sheet and a shirt that
had dropped into the water for her to dry them, and
Darya Alexandrovna began to talk to the women. At first
they laughed behind their hands and did not understand
her questions, but soon they grew bolder and began to
talk, winning Darya Alexandrovna’s heart at once by the
genuine admiration of the children that they showed.
‘My, what a beauty! as white as sugar,’ said one,
admiring Tanitchka, and shaking her head; ‘but thin..’
‘Yes, she has been ill.’
‘And so they’ve been bathing you too,’ said another to
the baby.
‘No; he’s only three months old,’ answered Darya
Alexandrovna with pride.

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