Masha (the lower Masha)

A brunette maid with a crimson ribbon in her hair who serves in the household's lower, "woman's kingdom" half under Aunt Tatyana Ivanovna, waiting on the old women and clearing dishes at the Christmas Day supper. Explicitly distinguished in the source from Anna Akimovna's personal maid, "the red-haired Masha" -- the story's own device for telling the two Mashas apart. She reports, with an air of mystery, having noticed an unfamiliar mustached man loitering in the yard each morning that week, and later joins the evening's game of kings alongside Varvarushka and the seamstress Marfa Petrovna.