Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/369

 but now everything has been beautifully arranged. I owe it all to my old nurse," she added, indicating Matriona Filimonovna, who, perceiving that they were speaking of her, gave Levin a pleasant, friendly smile. She knew him, and knew that he would make a splendid husband for the young lady, and she wished that it might be so.

"Will you get in? We will squeeze up a little," said she.

"No, I will walk.—Children, which of you will run with me to get ahead of the horses?"

The children were very slightly acquainted with Levin, and did not remember where they had seen him; but they had none of that strange feeling of timidity and aversion which children are so often blamed for showing toward grown-up persons who are not sincere. Pretense in any person may deceive the shrewdest and most experienced of men, but a child of very limited intelligence detects it and is repelled by it, though it be most carefully hidden.

Whatever faults Levin had, he could not be accused of lack of sincerity, and consequently the children showed him the same good-will that they had seen on their mother's face. The two eldest instantly accepted his invitation, and ran with him as they would have gone with their nurse, or Miss Hull, or their mother. Lili also wanted to go with him, and her mother intrusted her to him; so he set her on his shoulder and began to run with her.

"Don't be frightened, don't be frightened, Darya Aleksandrovna," he said, laughing gayly. "I won't hurt her or let her fall."

And when she saw his strong, agile, and, at the same time, prudent and careful movements, the mother felt reassured, and smiled as she watched him, with pleasure and approval.

There in the country, with the children and with Darya Aleksandrovna, whom he liked, Levin entered into that boylike, happy frame of mind which was not unusual with him, and which Darya Aleksandrovna