“What is it, Agafea Mihalovna?” Kitty asked suddenly of Agafea Mihalovna, who was standing with a mysterious air, and a face full of meaning.

“About supper.”

“Well, that’s right,” said Dolly; “you go and arrange about it, and I’ll go and hear Grisha repeat his lesson, or else he will have nothing done all day.”

“That’s my lesson!  No, Dolly, I’m going,” said Levin, jumping up.

Grisha, who was by now at a high school, had to go over the lessons of the term in the summer holidays.  Darya Alexandrovna, who had been studying Latin with her son in Moscow before, had made it a rule on coming to the Levins’ to go over with him, at least once a day, the most difficult lessons of Latin and arithmetic.  Levin had offered to take her place, but the mother, having once overheard Levin’s lesson, and noticing that it was not given exactly as the teacher in Moscow had given it, said resolutely, though with much embarrassment and anxiety not to mortify Levin, that they must keep strictly to the book as the teacher had done, and that she had better undertake it again herself.  Levin was amazed both at Stepan Arkadyevitch, who, by neglecting his duty, threw upon the mother the supervision of studies of which she had no comprehension, and at the teachers for teaching the children so badly.  But he promised his sister-in-law to give the lessons exactly as she wished.  And he went on teaching Grisha, not in his own way, but by the book, and so took little interest in it, and often forgot the hour of the lesson.  So it had been today.

“No, I’m going, Dolly, you sit still,” he said.  “We’ll do it all properly, like the book.  Only when Stiva comes, and we go out shooting, then we shall have to miss it.”

And Levin went to Grisha.

Varenka was saying the same thing to Kitty.  Even in the happy, well-ordered household of the Levins Varenka had succeeded in making herself useful.

“I’ll see to the supper, you sit still,” she said, and got up to go to Agafea Mihalovna.

“Yes, yes, most likely they’ve not been able to get chickens.  If so, ours...”

“Agafea Mihalovna and I will see about it,” and Varenka vanished with her.

“What a nice girl!” said the princess.

“Not nice, maman; she’s an exquisite girl; there’s no one else like her.”

“So you are expecting Stepan Arkadyevitch today?” said Sergey Ivanovitch, evidently not disposed to pursue the conversation about Varenka.  “It would be difficult to find two sons-in-law more unlike than yours,” he said with a subtle smile.  “One all movement, only living in society, like a fish in water; the other our Kostya, lively, alert, quick in everything, but as soon as he is in society, he either sinks into apathy, or struggles helplessly like a fish on land.”

“Yes, he’s very heedless,” said the princess, addressing Sergey Ivanovitch.  “I’ve been meaning, indeed, to ask you to tell him that it’s out of the question for her” (she indicated Kitty) “to stay here; that she positively must come to Moscow.  He talks of getting a doctor down...”