Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SIX CHAPTER 2
For a second he felt that he was sharing the feeling of Agafea Mihalovna, vexation
at their making jam without water, and altogether at the outside Shtcherbatsky
element. He smiled, however, and went up to Kitty.
“Well, how are you?” he asked her, looking at her with the expression with which
everyone looked at her now.
“Oh, very well,” said Kitty, smiling, “and how have things gone with you?”
“The wagons held three times as much as the old carts did. Well, are we going for
the children? I’ve ordered the horses to be put in.”
“What! you want to take Kitty in the wagonette?” her mother said reproachfully.
“Yes, at a walking pace, princess.”
Levin never called the princess “maman” as men often do call their mothers-inlaw,
and the princess disliked his not doing so. But though he liked and respected
the princess, Levin could not call her so without a sense of profaning his feeling for
his dead mother.
“Come with us, maman,” said Kitty.
“I don’t like to see such imprudence.”
“Well, I’ll walk then, I’m so well.” Kitty got up and went to her husband and took
his hand.
“You may be well, but everything in moderation,” said the princess.
“Well, Agafea Mihalovna, is the jam done?” said Levin, smiling to Agafea Mihalovna,
and trying to cheer her up. “Is it all right in the new way?”
“I suppose it’s all right. For our notions it’s boiled too long.”
“It’ll be all the better, Agafea Mihalovna, it won’t mildew, even though our ice has
begun to thaw already, so that we’ve no cool cellar to store it,” said Kitty, at once
divining her husband’s motive, and addressing the old housekeeper with the same
feeling; “but your pickle’s so good, that mamma says she never tasted any like it,”
she added, smiling, and putting her kerchief straight.
Agafea Mihalovna looked angrily at Kitty.
“You needn’t try to console me, mistress. I need only to look at you with him,
and I feel happy,” she said, and something in the rough familiarity of that with him
touched Kitty.
“Come along with us to look for mushrooms, you will show us the best places.”
Agafea Mihalovna smiled and shook her head, as though to say: “I should like to be
angry with you too, but I can’t.”
“Do it, please, by my receipt,” said the princess; “put some paper over the jam,
and moisten it with a little rum, and without even ice, it will never go mildewy.”
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