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scaffolding. Workmen in aprons, standing on scaffolds, were laying
bricks, pouring mortar out of vats, and smoothing it with trowels.
“How quickly work gets done with you!” said Sviazhsky. “When I
was here last time the roof was not on.”
“By the autumn it will all be ready. Iside almost everything is
done,” said Anna.
“And what’s this new building?”
“That’s the house for the doctor and the dispensary,” answered
Vronsky, seeing the architect in a short jacket coming towards him; and
excusing himself to the ladies, he went to meet him.
Going round a hole where the workmen were slaking lime, he
stood still with the architect and began talking rather warmly.
“The front is still too low,” he said to Anna, who had asked what
was the matter.
“I said the foundation ought to be raised,” said Anna.
“Yes, of course it would have been much better, Anna Arkadyevna,”
said the architect, “but now it’s too late.”
“Yes, I take a great interest in it,” Anna answered Sviazhsky, who
was expressing his surprise at her knowledge of architecture. “This
new building ought to have been in harmony with the hospital. It was
an afterthought, and was begun without a plan.”
Vronsky, having finished his talk with the architect, joined the la-
dies, and led them inside the hospital.
Although they were still at work on the cornices outside and were
painting on the ground floor, upstairs almost all the rooms were fin-
ished. Going up the broad cast-iron staircase to the landing, they
walked into the first large room. The walls were stuccoed to look like
marble, the huge plate-glass windows were already in, only the par-
quet floor was not yet finished, and the carpenters, who were planing a
block of it, left their work, taking off the bands that fastened their hair,
to greet the gentry.
“This is the reception room,” said Vronsky. “Here there will be a
desk, tables, and benches, and nothing more.”
“This way; let us go in here. Don’t go near the window,” said Anna,
trying the paint to see if it were dry. “Alexey, the paint’s dry already,”
she added.
From the reception room they went into the corridor. Here Vronsky
showed them the mechanism for ventilation on a novel system. Then
he showed them marble baths, and beds with extraordinary springs.
Then he showed them the wards one after another, the storeroom, the
linen room, then the heating stove of a new pattern, then the trolleys,
which would make no noise as they carried everything needed along
the corridors, and many other things. Sviazhsky, as a connoisseur in the
latest mechanical improvements, appreciated everything fully. Dolly
simply wondered at all she had not seen before, and, anxious to under-
stand it all, made minute inquiries about everything, which gave Vronsky
great satisfaction.
“Yes, I imagine that this will be the solitary example of a properly
fitted hospital in Russia,” said Sviazhsky.
“And won’t you have a lying-in ward?” asked Dolly. “That’s so
much needed in the country. I have often...”
In spite of his usual courtesy, Vronsky interrupted her.
“This is not a lying-in home, but a hospital for the sick, and is
intended for all diseases, except infectious complaints,” he said. “Ah!
look at this,” and he rolled up to Darya Alexandrovna an invalid chair
that had just been ordered for the convalescents. “Look.” He sat
down in the chair and began moving it. “The patient can’t walk—still
too weak, perhaps, or something wrong with his legs, but he must have