"I'll do it," said Dolly, and getting up, she carefully passed
the spoon over the frothing sugar, and from time to time shook
off the clinging jam from the spoon by knocking it on a plate
that was covered with yellow-red scum and blood-colored syrup.
"How they'll enjoy this at tea-time!" she thought of her
children, remembering how she herself as a child had wondered how
it was the grown-up people did not eat what was best of all--the
scum of the jam.

"Stiva says it's much better to give money." Dolly took up
meanwhile the weighty subject under discussion, what presents
should be made to servants. "But..."

"Money's out of the question!" the princess and Kitty exclaimed
with one voice. "They appreciate a present..."

"Well, last year, for instance, I bought our Matrona Semyenovna,
not a poplin, but something of that sort," said the princess.

"I remember she was wearing it on your nameday."

"A charming pattern--so simple and refined,--I should have liked
it myself, if she hadn't had it. Something like Varenka's. So
pretty and inexpensive."

"Well, now I think it's done," said Dolly, dropping the syrup
from the spoon.

"When it sets as it drops, it's ready. Cook it a little longer,
Agafea Mihalovna."

"The flies!" said Agafea Mihalovna angrily. "It'll be just the
same," she added.

"Ah! how sweet it is! don't frighten it!" Kitty said suddenly,
looking at a sparrow that had settled on the step and was pecking
at the center of a raspberry.

"Yes, but you keep a little further from the stove," said her
mother.

"_A propos de Varenka_," said Kitty, speaking in French, as they
had been doing all the while, so that Agafea Mihalovna should not
understand them, "you know, mamma, I somehow expect things to be
settled today. You know what I mean. How splendid it would be!"

"But what a famous matchmaker she is!" said Dolly. "How
carefully and cleverly she throws them together!..."

"No; tell me, mamma, what do you think?"

"Why, what is one to think? He" (_he_ meant Sergey Ivanovitch)
"might at any time have been a match for anyone in Russia; now,
of course, he's not quite a young man, still I know ever so many
girls would be glad to marry him even now.... She's a very nice
girl, but he might..."

"Oh, no, mamma, do understand why, for him and for her too,
nothing better could be imagined. In the first place, she's
charming!" said Kitty, crooking one of her fingers.

"He thinks her very att