The old princess, conscious that Agafya Mikhaïlovna's indignation must be directed against her as the chief adviser in the concoction of the sweetmeat, pretended that she was busy with something else, and was not interested in it; but though she talked of extraneous affairs she occasionally glanced at the cooking out of the corner of her eyes.
"I always buy my girls' dresses at a cheap shop," the princess was saying in regard to something they had been talking about "Hadn't you better take off the scum, my dear?"[1] she added, addressing Agafya Mikhaïlovna. "It is not at all necessary for you to do it, and it is hot," said she, stopping Kitty.
"I will do it," said Kitty, who had got up and was carefully stirring the boiling sugar with a spoon, occasionally pouring out a little on a plate which was already covered with a variegated, yellowish red and sanguine scum, mixed with syrup.
"How they will like to lick it!" she said to herself, thinking of her children and remembering how she herself, when she was a little girl, had wondered that grown-up people did not feed upon that best of all things — scum!
"Stiva says that it is far better to give money," Dolly was saying in regard to the question of making presents, which they had been discussing. "But ...."
"How can one give money?" exclaimed the mother and Kitty, simultaneously. "They despise it."
"Well, for example, last year I bought our Matriona Semyonovna, not a poplin, but some of that kind ...." said the princess.
"I remember she wore it on your name-day."
"A lovely figure! So simple and ladylike. I should have liked one of it myself, if she had not one. Like the kind Varenka wears. So pretty and cheap."
"Now I think it is done," said Dolly, dropping the syrup from the spoon.
"When it crystallizes it is done. Cook it a little more, Agafya Mikhaïlovna."
- ↑ Galubushka, little dove.
