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believe what a pleasure it is! How have you spent the day?”
“Very well. But have you really been mowing the whole day? I
expect you’re as hungry as a wolf. Kouzma has got everything ready for
you.”
“No, I don’t feel hungry even. I had something to eat there. But I’ll
go and wash.”
“Yes, go along, go along, and I’ll come to you directly,” said Sergey
Ivanovitch, shaking his head as he looked at his brother. “Go along,
make haste,” he added smiling, and gathering up his books, he pre-
pared to go too. He, too, felt suddenly good-humored and disinclined
to leave his brother’s side. “But what did you do while it was raining?”
“Rain? Why, there was scarcely a drop. I’ll come directly. So you
had a nice day too? That’s first-rate.” And Levin went off to change
his clothes.
Five minutes later the brothers met in the dining room. Although
it seemed to Levin that he was not hungry, and he sat down to dinner
simply so as not to hurt Kouzma’s feelings, yet when he began to eat
the dinner struck him as extraordinarily good. Sergey Ivanovitch watched
him with a smile.
“Oh, by the way, there’s a letter for you,” said he. “Kouzma, bring it
down, please. And mind you shut the doors.”
The letter was from Oblonsky. Levin read it aloud. Oblonsky
wrote to him from Petersburg: “I have had a letter from Dolly; she’s at
Ergushovo, and everything seems going wrong there. Do ride over and
see her, please; help her with advice; you know all about it. She will be
so glad to see you. She’s quite alone, poor thing. My mother-in-law
and all of them are still abroad.”
“That’s capital! I will certainly ride over to her,” said Levin. “Or
we’ll go together. She’s such a splendid woman, isn’t she?”
“They’re not far from here, then?”
“Twenty-five miles. Or perhaps it is thirty. But a capital road.
Capital, we’ll drive over.”
“I shall be delighted,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, still smiling. The
sight of his younger brother’s appearance had immediately put him in
a good humor.
“Well, you have an appetite!” he said, looking at his dark-red, sun-
burnt face and neck bent over the plate.
“Splendid! You can’t imagine what an effectual remedy it is for
every sort of foolishness. I want to enrich medicine with a new word:
Arbeitskur.”
“Well, but you don’t need it, I should fancy.”
“No, but for all sorts of nervous invalids.”
“Yes, it ought to be tried. I had meant to come to the mowing to
look at you, but it was so unbearably hot that I got no further than the
forest. I sat there a little, and went on by the forest to the village, met
your old nurse, and sounded her as to the peasants’ view of you. As far
as I can make out, they don’t approve of this. She said: ‘It’s not a
gentleman’s work.’ Altogether, I fancy that in the people’s ideas there
are very clear and definite notions of certain, as they call it, ‘gentle-
manly’ lines of action. And they don’t sanction the gentry’s moving
outside bounds clearly laid down in their ideas.”
“Maybe so; but anyway it’s a pleasure such as I have never known
in my life. And there’s no harm in it, you know. Is there?” answered
Levin. “I can’t help it if they don’t like it. Though I do believe it’s all
right. Eh?”
“Altogether,” pursued Sergey Ivanovitch, “you’re satisfied with your
day?”
“Quite satisfied. We cut the whole meadow. And such a splendid