Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART THREE CHAPTER 30
God grant every one of us the like,” she said, referring to a servant who had died
recently. “Took the sacrament and all.”
“That’s not what I mean,” said he. “I mean that I’m acting for my own advantage.
It’s all the better for me if the peasants do their work better.”
“Well, whatever you do, if he’s a lazy good-for-nought, everything’ll be at sixes
and sevens. If he has a conscience, he’ll work, and if not, there’s no doing anything.”
“Oh, come, you say yourself Ivan has begun looking after the cattle better.”
“All I say is,” answered Agafea Mihalovna, evidently not speaking at random, but
in strict sequence of idea, “that you ought to get married, that’s what I say.”
Agafea Mihalovna’s allusion to the very subject he had only just been thinking
about, hurt and stung him. Levin scowled, and without answering her, he sat down
again to his work, repeating to himself all that he had been thinking of the real significance
of that work. Only at intervals he listened in the stillness to the click of
Agafea Mihalovna’s needles, and recollecting what he did not want to remember, he
frowned again.
At nine o’clock they heard the bell and the faint vibration of a carriage over the
mud.
“Well, here’s visitors come to us, and you won’t be dull,” said Agafea Mihalovna,
getting up and going to the door. But Levin overtook her. His work was not going
well now, and he was glad of a visitor, whoever it might be.
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