Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 13
Levin had ended the row he was in a great heat, and he stopped and gave up the
sieve to Vassily.
“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 you 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 broken 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.
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