way from Starydwor to Starawie['s].

Mr. and Mrs. Tiralla were preparing to go to the Gradewitz ball in
spite of the snow and the bad roads. They hoped they would be able to
get through all right. Mr. Tiralla could never have brought himself to
let an opportunity pass of gloating over the many eager eyes that would
watch his wife in the mazes of the dance, whilst he sat comfortably in
the corner of the ballroom with his glass and his cards.

Mrs. Tiralla was a very good dancer, and her heart beat as she unpacked
the ball-dress her husband had ordered for her from a fashionable
dressmaker in Posen. She could very well have worn her blue silk again
if the rats had not been nibbling it! However, this filmy white gauze,
with its long flowing sash and a small bouquet of artificial roses for
the bodice and another for the hair, was certainly much prettier; there
was an underskirt of silk, too, which rustled and swished every time
she moved.

Mrs. Tiralla was dressing in the large sitting-room on the ground
floor. The bedroom upstairs was too cold, so Marianna had brought the
looking-glass down and had fixed it up on a table by means of some
pieces of wood, and placed two lighted candles in front of it. Mrs.
Tiralla was doing her own hair. The Gradewitz dressmaker would have
been asked to do it, as she was also the hairdresser of the
neighbourhood, but she had taken offence when she heard that Mrs.
Tiralla had got her ball-dress from Posen.

[Pg 86]

Mrs. Tiralla did not crimp her hair as a rule, but to-day she got a
waving-iron, and she and Marianna did it together. The maid was by no
means clumsy, although she had such big hands, and she helped her
mistress to pile up her wavy hair at the top of her head. But when at
last it was ready, Mrs. Tiralla thought it so hideous, that she burst
into tears and tore it down with an angry "_Psia krew!_" which made
Rosa shrink. The child was crouching in a dark corner of the room with
her hands clasped round her knees, gazing with admiration at the
beautiful vision in the white embroidered petticoat.

Ugh! how difficult it was to please the mistress this evening; now she
wanted this, now that. If Marianna had not consoled herself with the
thought that she would soon be mistress of the house for a whole night,
she would have cried instead of laughing pleasantly as she was doing
now. "Pani must do her hair in her usual way," she said. "That suits
Pani best of all."

"She is right