Pulling the stiff rein and holding in the good horse that snorted with impatience and seemed begging to be let go, Levin looked round at Ivan sitting beside him, not knowing what to do with his unoccupied hand, continually pressing down his shirt as it puffed out, and he tried to find something to start a conversation about with him.  He would have said that Ivan had pulled the saddle-girth up too high, but that was like blame, and he longed for friendly, warm talk.  Nothing else occurred to him.

“Your honor must keep to the right and mind that stump,” said the coachman, pulling the rein Levin held.

“Please don’t touch and don’t teach me!” said Levin, angered by this interference.  Now, as always, interference made him angry, and he felt sorrowfully at once how mistaken had been his supposition that his spiritual condition could immediately change him in contact with reality.

He was not a quarter of a mile from home when he saw Grisha and Tanya running to meet him.

“Uncle Kostya! mamma’s coming, and grandfather, and Sergey Ivanovitch, and someone else,” they said, clambering up into the trap.

“Who is he?”

“An awfully terrible person!  And he does like this with his arms,” said Tanya, getting up in the trap and mimicking Katavasov.

“Old or young?” asked Levin, laughing, reminded of someone, he did not know whom, by Tanya’s performance.

“Oh, I hope it’s not a tiresome person!” thought Levin.

As soon as he turned, at a bend in the road, and saw the party coming, Levin recognized Katavasov in a straw hat, walking along swinging his arms just as Tanya had shown him.  Katavasov was very fond of discussing metaphysics, having derived his notions from natural science writers who had never studied metaphysics, and in Moscow Levin had had many arguments with him of late.

And one of these arguments, in which Katavasov had obviously considered that he came off victorious, was the first thing Levin thought of as he recognized him.

“No, whatever I do, I won’t argue and give utterance to my ideas lightly,” he thought.

Getting out of the trap and greeting his brother and Katavasov, Levin asked about his wife.

“She has taken Mitya to Kolok” (a copse near the house).  “She meant to have him out there because it’s so hot indoors,” said Dolly.  Levin had always advised his wife not to take the baby to the wood, thinking it unsafe, and he was not pleased to hear this.

“She rushes about from place to place with him,” said the prince, smiling.  “I advised her to try putting him in the ice cellar.”

“She meant to come to the bee house.  She thought you would be there.  We are going there,” said Dolly.

“Well, and what are you doing?” said Sergey Ivanovitch, falling back from the rest and walking beside him.

“Oh, nothing special.  Busy as usual with the land,” answered Levin.  “Well, and what about you?  Come for long?  We have been expecting you for such a long time.”