Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/744

 "Varenka, I shall be very glad if a certain thing comes to pass," she said to her in a whisper, and giving her a kiss.

"Are you coming with us?" asked Varenka of Levin, confused, and pretending that she had not heard what had been said.

"Yes, but only as far as the barns; I shall have to stop there."

"What do you propose to do there?" asked Kitty.

"I have some new carts to examine and test.—And where shall I find you?"

"On the terrace."

CHAPTER II

the women were gathered on the terrace. They generally liked to sit there after dinner, but to-day they had a special matter of interest before them. Besides the making of baby-shirts and the knitting of bands, in which all of them were engaged at that time, they were engaged in superintending the cooking of some preserves after a recipe unknown to Agafya Mikhaïlovna. Kitty had brought with her this new process, which had been in use in her own home and required no water. Agafya Mikhaïlovna, who had before been shown how to do it in this way, considering that what had always been done at the Levins' could not be improved on, insisted on pouring water into the berries, declaring it could not be made otherwise. She had been detected doing this, and now the berries were cooking in the presence of them all, and Agafya Mikhaïlovna was to be brought to a realizing sense of the fact that the preserves could be made without the use of water.

Agafya Mikhaïlovna, with flushed and heated face and disheveled hair and with her sleeves rolled up to the elbow, was moving a porringer round and round over a portable stove and looking gloomily at it, wishing with all her soul that the berries would thicken and not boil.