Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/444

 farm-work he had kept postponing his visit there. Now he was glad to escape from the neighborhood of the Shcherbatskys, and especially from his estate, and to go on a hunting-expedition, which for all his tribulations was a sovereign remedy.

CHAPTER XXV

In the district of Surof there were neither railways nor post-roads; and Levin took his own horses, and went in a tarantas or traveling-carriage.

When he was halfway, he stopped to get a meal at the house of a rich muzhik. The host, who was a bald, robust old man, with a great red beard, growing gray on the cheeks, opened the gate, crowding up against the post to let the troika enter. Pointing the coachman to a place under the shed in his large, neat, and orderly new courtyard, with charred sokhas or wooden-plows, the old man invited Levin to enter the room. A neatly clad young girl, with galoshes on her bare feet, stooping down, was washing up the floor in the new entry. When she saw Levin's dog, she was startled, and screamed, but immediately laughed at her own terror when she found that the dog would not bite. With her bare arm she pointed Levin to the living-room, then stooping down again, she hid her handsome face, and continued her scrubbing.

"Will you have the samovar?" she asked.

"Yes, please."

The living-room was large, with a Dutch stove and a partition. Under the sacred images stood a table ornamented with colored designs, a bench, and two chairs. Near the doorway was a cupboard with dishes. The window-shutters were closed; there were few flies; and it was so neat that Levin took care that Laska, who had been flying over the road, and was covered with splashes of mud, should not soil the floor, and bade her lie down in the corner near the door. After glancing into the living-room. Levin went to the back of the house.