This black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life--with childish bare shoulders which after her run heaved and shook her bodice, with black curls tossed backward, thin bare arms, little legs in lace-frilled drawers, and feet in low slippers--was just at that charming age when a girl is no longer a child, though the child is not yet a young woman.

Escaping from her father she ran to hide her flushed face in the lace of her mother's mantilla--not paying the least attention to her severe remark--and began to laugh.

She laughed, and in fragmentary sentences tried to explain about a doll which she produced from the folds of her frock.

"Do you see?... My doll... Mimi... You see..." was all Natasha managed to utter (to her everything seemed funny).

She leaned against her mother and burst into such a loud, ringing fit of laughter that even the prim visitor could not help joining in.