Hearing Anna's voice, a smart, tall, English nurse with a
disagreeable face and a dissolute expression walked in at the
door, hurriedly shaking her fair curls, and immediately began to
defend herself though Anna had not found fault with her. At
every word Anna said, the English nurse said hurriedly several
times, "Yes, my lady."
The rosy baby with her black eyebrows and hair, her sturdy red
little body with tight goose-flesh skin, delighted Darya
Alexandrovna in spite of the cross expression with which she
stared at the stranger. She positively envied the baby's healthy
appearance. She was delighted, too, at the baby's crawling. Not
one of her own children had crawled like that. When the baby was
put on the carpet and its little dress tucked up behind, it was
wonderfully charming. Looking round like some little wild animal
at the grown-up big people with her bright black eyes, she
smiled, unmistakably pleased at their admiring her, and holding
her legs sideways, she pressed vigorously on her arms, and
rapidly drew her whole back up after, and then made another step
forward with her little arms.
But the whole atmosphere of the nursery, and especially the
English nurse, Darya Alexandrovna did not like at all. It was
only on the supposition that no good nurse would have entered so
irregular a household as Anna's that Darya Alexandrovna could
explain to herself how Anna with her insight into people could
take such an unprepossessing, disreputable-looking woman as nurse
to her child.
Besides, from a few words that were dropped, Darya Alexandrovna
saw at once that Anna, the two nurses, and the child had no
common existence, and that the mother's visit was something
exceptional. Anna wanted to get the baby her plaything, and
could not find it.
Most amazing of all was the fact that on being asked how many
teeth the baby had, Anna answered wrong, and knew nothing about
the two last teeth.
"I sometimes feel sorry I'm so superfluous here," said Anna,
going out of the nursery and holding up her skirt so as to escape
the plaything standing in the doorway. "It was very different
with my first child."
"I expected it to be the other way," said Darya Alexandrovna
shyly.
"Oh, no! By the way, do you know I saw Seryozha?" said Anna,
screwing up her eyes, as though looking at something far away.
"But we'll talk about that later. You wouldn't believe it, I'm
like a hungry beggar woman when a full dinner is set before her,
and she does not know what to begin on first. The dinner is you,
and the talks I have before me with you, which I could never have
with anyone else; and I don't know which subject to begin upon
first. _Mais je ne vous ferai grace de rien_. I must have
everything out with you."