Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART THREE CHAPTER 1
Besides this, Konstantin Levin was not at his ease with his brother, because in
summer in the country Levin was continually busy with work on the land, and the
long summer day was not long enough for him to get through all he had to do, while
Sergey Ivanovitch was taking a holiday. But though he was taking a holiday now,
that is to say, he was doing no writing, he was so used to intellectual activity that he
liked to put into concise and eloquent shape the ideas that occurred to him, and liked
to have someone to listen to him. His most usual and natural listener was his brother.
And so in spite of the friendliness and directness of their relations, Konstantin felt
an awkwardness in leaving him alone. Sergey Ivanovitch liked to stretch himself on
the grass in the sun, and to lie so, basking and chatting lazily.
“You wouldn’t believe,” he would say to his brother, “what a pleasure this rural
laziness is to me. Not an idea in one’s brain, as empty as a drum!”
But Konstantin Levin found it dull sitting and listening to him, especially when
he knew that while he was away they would be carting dung onto the fields not
ploughed ready for it, and heaping it all up anyhow; and would not screw the shares
in the ploughs, but would let them come off and then say that the new ploughs were
a silly invention, and there was nothing like the old Andreevna plough, and so on.
“Come, you’ve done enough trudging about in the heat,” Sergey Ivanovitch
would say to him.
“No, I must just run round to the counting-house for a minute,” Levin would
answer, and he would run off to the fields.
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