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172 "Do you remember the little song, Donc vivons?"

"I do."

"Let us sing it!"

"All right!"

"Viérotchka! Viérotchka, have I waked you up? However, breakfast is ready. I was frightened, I heard you groaning; I came in, and you were singing in your sleep."

"No, my mílenki, you didn't wake me; I should have waked myself. But what a strange dream I had, mílenki; I will tell you at tea. Leave me; I want to get dressed. And how did you dare to come into my room without permission, Dmitri Sergéitch? You forget youself [sic]. Were you frightened about me, my mílenki? Come here, and I will kiss you for it!" She kissed him. "Now leave me! leave me! I want to get dressed."

"Oh, let me stay! I'll act as your dressing-maid."

"Nu! I don't object, only how shameful it is."

sewing union was established. The foundations were very simple at first,—so simple, indeed, that it is not worth while to speak of them. Viéra Pavlovna did not make any rules at all for her first three seamstresses, except that she would pay them a trifle more than the regular seamstresses were getting at the shops. There was nothing particularly strange about the business; the seamstresses saw that Viéra Pavlovna was not a woman of mere words, not fickle; and therefore, without any hesitation they accepted her offer to work with her. There was no reason for hesitation in the fact that a woman of moderate means wanted to establish a sewing shop. These three girls found three or four more. They selected them with the same care with which Viéra Pavlovna proposed to them, and in these conditions of choice there was nothing worthy of suspicion; that is, there was nothing out of the ordinary run about it. A young and modest woman wishes the working girls in her establishment to be girls of straightforward character, kind, considerate, inclined to stay in one place; is there anything strange about that? She does not want any quarrels, that's all; and therefore it's clever of her, and nothing