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smart trotter in the char-a-banc was only good for promenage, and
wouldn’t do thirty miles straight off in the heat.
The peasants had all got up from the cart and were inquisitively
and mirthfully staring at the meeting of the friends, making their com-
ments on it.
“They’re pleased, too; haven’t seen each other for a long while,”
said the curly-headed old man with the bast round his hair.
“I say, Uncle Gerasim, if we could take that raven horse now, to cart
the corn, that ‘ud be quick work!”
“Look-ee! Is that a woman in breeches?” said one of them, point-
ing to Vassenka Veslovsky sitting in a side saddle.
“Nay, a man! See how smartly he’s going it!”
“Eh, lads! seems we’re not going to sleep, then?”
“What chance of sleep today!” said the old man, with a sidelong
look at the sun. “Midday’s past, look-ee! Get your hooks, and come
along!”
Chapter 18.
Anna looked at Dolly’s thin, care-worn face, with its wrinkles filled
with dust from the road, and she was on the point of saying what she
was thinking, that is, that Dolly had got thinner. But, conscious that
she herself had grown handsomer, and that Dolly’s eyes were telling
her so, she sighed and began to speak about herself.
“You are looking at me,” she said, “and wondering how I can be
happy in my position? Well! it’s shameful to confess, but I... I’m inex-
cusably happy. Something magical has happened to me, like a dream,
when you’re frightened, panic-stricken, and all of a sudden you wake
up and all the horrors are no more. I have waked up. I have lived
through the misery, the dread, and now for a long while past, especially
since we’ve been here, I’ve been so happy!...” she said, with a timid
smile of inquiry looking at Dolly.
“How glad I am!” said Dolly smiling, involuntarily speaking more
coldly than she wanted to. “I’m very glad for you. Why haven’t you
written to me?”
“Why?... Because I hadn’t the courage.... You forget my posi-
tion...”
“To me? Hadn’t the courage? If you knew how I...I look at...”
Darya Alexandrovna wanted to express her thoughts of the morn-
ing, but for some reason it seemed to her now out of place to do so.