“Why, sir, it was you taught us the year before last.  You gave me two measures.  We sold about eight bushels and sowed a rood.”

“Well, mind you crumble up the clods,” said Levin, going towards his horse, “and keep an eye on Mishka.  And if there’s a good crop you shall have half a rouble for every acre.”

“Humbly thankful.  We are very well content, sir, as it is.”

Levin got on his horse and rode towards the field where was last year’s clover, and the one which was ploughed ready for the spring corn.

The crop of clover coming up in the stubble was magnificent.  It had survived everything, and stood up vividly green through the broken stalks of last year’s wheat.  The horse sank in up to the pasterns, and he drew each hoof with a sucking sound out of the half-thawed ground.  Over the ploughland riding was utterly impossible; the horse could only keep a foothold where there was ice, and in the thawing furrows he sank deep in at each step.  The ploughland was in splendid condition; in a couple of days it would be fit for harrowing and sowing.  Everything was capital, everything was cheering.  Levin rode back across the streams, hoping the water would have gone down.  And he did in fact get across, and startled two ducks.  “There must be snipe too,” he thought, and just as he reached the turning homewards he met the forest keeper, who confirmed his theory about the snipe.

Levin went home at a trot, so as to have time to eat his dinner and get his gun ready for the evening.

Chapter 14

As he rode up to the house in the happiest frame of mind, Levin heard the bell ring at the side of the principal entrance of the house.

“Yes, that’s someone from the railway station,” he thought, “just the time to be here from the Moscow train...Who could it be?  What if it’s brother Nikolay?  He did say:  ’Maybe I’ll go to the waters, or maybe I’ll come down to you.’” He felt dismayed and vexed for the first minute, that his brother Nikolay’s presence should come to disturb his happy mood of spring.  But he felt ashamed of the feeling, and at once he opened, as it were, the arms of his soul, and with a softened feeling of joy and expectation, now he hoped with all his heart that it was his brother.  He pricked up his horse, and riding out from behind the acacias he saw a hired three-horse sledge from the railway station, and a gentleman in a fur coat.  It was not his brother.  “Oh, if it were only some nice person one could talk to a little!” he thought.

“Ah,” cried Levin joyfully, flinging up both his hands.  “Here’s a delightful visitor!  Ah, how glad I am to see you!” he shouted, recognizing Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“I shall find out for certain whether she’s married, or when she’s going to be married,” he thought.  And on that delicious spring day he felt that the thought of her did not hurt him at all.