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 "What now?" thought Levin, as he saw a servant run from the house and stop the cart. It was only to find a place for the machinist, whom Levin had entirely forgotten. The machinist, with a low bow, said something to Veslovsky, and clambered into the tarantas, and they drove off together.

Stepan Arkadyevitch and the old princess were indignant at Levin's conduct. And he himself felt that he had been not only ridiculous in the highest degree, but even blameworthy and disgraceful; but as he remembered all that he and his wife had suffered, he asked himself how he should do another time in similar circumstances, and his answer was that he should do exactly the same thing again.

In spite of all this, toward the end of the day, all of them, with the exception of the old princess, who could not forgive Levin's behavior, became extraordinarily gay and lively, just like children after a punishment or like grown people after a solemn official reception, so that in the evening, in the absence of the old princess, they talked about the dismissal of Vasenka as about something that had taken place long, long before. And Dolly, who had inherited from her father the gift of telling a funny story, made Varenka laugh till she cried, by telling her three and four times, and each time with new amusing details, how she had just put on, in honor of their guest, some new ribbons, and was just going into the drawing-room, when, at that very minute, the rattle of an old tumble-down wagon drew her to the window. Who was in this old tumble-down wagon? Vasenka himself! and his Scotch cap, his love-songs, his romantic airs, and his gaiters, seated on the straw!

"If only a carriage had been given him! But no! Then I hear a shout: 'Hold on!' 'Well,' I say to myself, 'they have taken pity on him;' not in the least; I look and see a fat German,—and off they go! and my ribbons were wasted."