"Goodness! What shall I do? We have no gloves," I thought to myself.
"I must go upstairs and search about." Yet though I rummaged in every
drawer, I only found, in one of them, my green travelling mittens, and,
in another, a single lilac-coloured glove, a thing which could be of no
use to me, firstly, because it was very old and dirty, secondly, because
it was much too large for me, and thirdly (and principally), because the
middle finger was wanting--Karl having long ago cut it off to wear over
a sore nail.

However, I put it on--not without some diffident contemplation of the
blank left by the middle finger and of the ink-stained edges round the
vacant space.

"If only Natalia Savishna had been here," I reflected, "we should
certainly have found some gloves. I can't go downstairs in this
condition. Yet, if they ask me why I am not dancing, what am I to say?
However, I can't remain here either, or they will be sending upstairs to
fetch me. What on earth am I to do?" and I wrung my hands.

"What are you up to here?" asked Woloda as he burst into the room. "Go
and engage a partner. The dancing will be beginning directly."

"Woloda," I said despairingly, as I showed him my hand with two fingers
thrust into a single finger of the dirty glove, "Woloda, you, never
thought of this."

"Of what?" he said impatiently. "Oh, of gloves," he added with a
careless glance at my hand. "That's nothing. We can ask Grandmamma what
she thinks about it," and without further ado he departed downstairs. I