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“Well, master, when summer’s here, mind you don’t scold me for
these rows,” said Vassily.
“Eh?” said Levin cheerily, already feeling the effect of his method.
“Why, you’ll see in the summer time. It’ll look different. Look you
where I sowed last spring. How I did work at it! I do my best, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch, d’ye see, as I would for my own father. I don’t like bad
work myself, nor would I let another man do it. What’s good for the
master’s good for us too. To look out yonder now,” said Vassily, pointing,
“it does one’s heart good.”
“It’s a lovely spring, Vassily.”
“Why, it’s a spring such as the old men don’t remember the like of.
I was up home; an old man up there has sown wheat too, about an acre
of it. He was saying you wouldn’t know it from rye.”
“Have yo been sowing wheat long?”
“Why, sir, it was you taught us the year before last. You gave me
two measures. We sold about eight bushels and sowed a rood.”
“Well, mind you crumble up the clods,” said Levin, going towards
his horse, “and keep an eye on Mishka. And if there’s a good crop you
shall have half a rouble for every acre.”
“Humbly thankful. We are very well content, sir, as it is.”
Levin got on his horse and rode towards the field where was last
year’s clover, and the one which was ploughed ready for the spring
corn.
The crop of clover coming up in the stubble was magnificent. It
had survived everything, and stood up vividly green through the bro-
ken stalks of last year’s wheat. The horse sank in up to the pasterns,
and he drew each hoof with a sucking sound out of the half-thawed
ground. Over the ploughland riding was utterly impossible; the horse
could only keep a foothold where there was ice, and in the thawing
furrows he sank deep in at each step. The ploughland was in splendid
condition; in a couple of days it would be fit for harrowing and sowing.
Everything was capital, everything was cheering. Levin rode back
across the streams, hoping the water would have gone down. And he
did in fact get across, and startled two ducks. “There must be snipe
too,” he thought, and just as he reached the turning homewards he met
the forest keeper, who confirmed his theory about the snipe.
Levin went home at a trot, so as to have time to eat his dinner and
get his gun ready for the evening.