Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART THREE CHAPTER 25
Chapter 25
IN the Surovsky district there was no railway nor service of post horses, and Levin
drove there with his own horses in his big, old-fashioned carriage.
He stopped halfway at a well-to-do peasant’s to feed his horses. A bald, wellpreserved
old man, with a broad, red beard, gray on his cheeks, opened the gate,
squeezing against the gatepost to let the three horses pass. Directing the coachman
to a place under the shed in the big, clean, tidy yard, with charred, old-fashioned
ploughs in it, the old man asked Levin to come into the parlor. A cleanly dressed
young woman, with clogs on her bare feet, was scrubbing the floor in the new outer
room. She was frightened of the dog, that ran in after Levin, and uttered a shriek,
but began laughing at her own fright at once when she was told the dog would not
hurt her. Pointing Levin with her bare arm to the door into the parlor, she bent down
again, hiding her handsome face, and went on scrubbing.
“Would you like the samovar?” she asked.
“Yes, please.”
The parlor was a big room, with a Dutch stove, and a screen dividing it into two.
Under the holy pictures stood a table painted in patterns, a bench, and two chairs.
Near the entrance was a dresser full of crockery. The shutters were closed, there
were few flies, and it was so clean that Levin was anxious that Laska, who had been
running along the road and bathing in puddles, should not muddy the floor, and
ordered her to a place in the corner by the door. After looking round the parlor,
Levin went out in the back yard. The good-looking young woman in clogs, swinging
the empty pails on the yoke, ran on before him to the well for water.
“Look sharp, my girl!” the old man shouted after her, good-humoredly, and he
went up to Levin. “Well, sir, are you going to Nikolay Ivanovitch Sviazhsky? His
honor comes to us too,” he began, chatting, leaning his elbows on the railing of the
steps. In the middle of the old man’s account of his acquaintance with Sviazhsky, the
gates creaked again, and laborers came into the yard from the fields, with wooden
ploughs and harrows. The horses harnessed to the ploughs and harrows were sleek
and fat. The laborers were obviously of the household: two were young men in
cotton shirts and caps, the two others were hired laborers in homespun shirts, one
an old man, the other a young fellow. Moving off from the steps, the old man went
up to the horses and began unharnessing them.
“What have they been ploughing?” asked Levin.
“Ploughing up the potatoes. We rent a bit of land too. Fedot, don’t let out the
gelding, but take it to the trough, and we’ll put the other in harness.”
“Oh, father, the ploughshares I ordered, has he brought them along?” asked the
big, healthy-looking fellow, obviously the old man’s son.
“There...in the outer room,” answered the old man, bundling together the harness
he had taken off, and flinging it on the ground. “You can put them on, while they
have dinner.”
The good-looking young woman came into the outer room with the full pails dragging
at her shoulders. More women came on the scene from somewhere, young and
handsome, middle-aged, old and ugly, with children and without children.
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