The beautiful and shapely Maryanka enters at the gate and throwing away her switch quickly slams the gate to and rushes with all the speed of her nimble feet to separate and drive the cattle into their sheds.

'Take off your slippers, you devil's wench!' shouts her mother, 'you've worn them into holes!' Maryanka is not at all offended at being called a 'devil's wench', but accepting it as a term of endearment cheerfully goes on with her task.

Her face is covered with a kerchief tied round her head.

She is wearing a pink smock and a green beshmet.

She disappears inside the lean-to shed in the yard, following the big fat cattle; and from the shed comes her voice as she speaks gently and persuasively to the buffalo: 'Won't she stand still?
What a creature! Come now, come old dear!' Soon the girl and the old woman pass from the shed to the dairy carrying two large pots of milk, the day's yield.