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‘Heavens, what a sight!’ said Sergei Ivanovich, glancing round at his brother with displeasure in the first moment. ‘The door, shut the door!’ he cried out. ‘You must have let in a good dozen.’

Sergei Ivanovich could not bear flies. He opened the window in his room only at night and kept the doors carefully shut.

‘By God, not a one. And if I did, I’ll catch it. You wouldn’t believe what a pleasure it was! How did your day go?’

‘Very well. But did you really mow for the whole day? I suppose you’re hungry as a wolf. Kuzma has everything ready for you.’

‘No, I don’t even want to eat. I ate there. But I will go and wash.’

‘Well, go, go, and I’ll join you presently,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, shaking his head as he looked at his brother. ‘Go, go quickly,’ he added with a smile and, gathering up his books, he got ready to go. He suddenly felt cheerful himself and did not want to part from his brother. ‘Well, and where were you when it rained?’

‘What rain? It barely sprinkled. I’ll come presently, then. You had a nice day, then? Well, that’s excellent.’ And Levin went to get dressed.

Five minutes later the brothers came together in the dining room. Though it seemed to Levin that he did not want to eat, and he sat down to dinner only so as not to offend Kuzma, once he started eating, the dinner seemed remarkably tasty to him. Smiling, Sergei Ivanovich looked at him.

‘Ah, yes, there’s a letter for you,’ he said. ‘Kuzma, bring it from downstairs, please. And see that you close the door.’

The letter was from Oblonsky. Levin read it aloud. Oblonsky was writing from Petersburg: ‘I received a letter from Dolly, she’s in Yergushovo, and nothing’s going right for her. Go and see her, please, help her with your advice, you know everything. She’ll be so glad to see you. She’s quite alone, poor thing. My mother-in-law and the others are all still abroad.’

‘That’s excellent! I’ll certainly go and see them,’ said Levin. ‘Or else let’s go together. She’s such a nice woman. Isn’t it so?’

‘Are they near by?’

‘Some twenty miles. Maybe twenty-five. But the road is excellent. An excellent trip.’

‘Delighted,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, still smiling.

The sight of his younger brother had immediately disposed him to cheerfulness.

‘Well, you’ve got quite an appetite!’ he said, looking at his red-brown sunburnt face and neck bent over the plate.

‘Excellent! You wouldn’t believe what a good regimen it is against all sorts of foolishness. I want to enrich medical science with a new term: Arbeitskur.’s

‘Well, it seems you’ve no need for that.’

‘No, but for various nervous patients.’

‘Yes, it ought to be tried. And I did want to come to the mowing to have a look at you, but the heat was so unbearable that I got no further than the wood. I sat a little, then walked through the wood to the village, met your nurse there and sounded her out about the muzhiks’ view of you. As I understand, they don’t approve of it. She said: “It’s not the master’s work.” Generally it seems to me that in the peasants’ understanding there is a very firmly defined requirement for certain, as they put it, “master‘s” activities. And they don’t allow gentlemen to go outside the limits defined by their understanding.’

‘Maybe. But I’ve never experienced such a pleasure in my life. And there’s no harm in it. Isn’t that so?’ Levin replied. ‘What can I do if they don’t like it? Nothing, I suppose. Eh?’

‘I can see,’ Sergei Ivanovich continued, ‘that you’re generally pleased with your day.’

‘Very pleased. We mowed the whole meadow. And what an old man I made friends with there! Such a delightful man, you’d never imagine it!’

‘Well, so you’re pleased with your day. And so am I. First, I solved two chess problems, one of them a very nice one - it opens with a pawn. I’ll show you. And then I was thinking about our conversation yesterday.’

‘What? Our conversation yesterday?’ said Levin, blissfully narrowing his eyes and puffing after he finished dinner, quite unable