Page 1259 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

When he had made sure he had missed, Levin looked
round and saw the horses and the wagonette not on the
road but in the marsh.
Veslovsky, eager to see the shooting, had driven into

the marsh, and got the horses stuck in the mud.
‘Damn the fellow!’ Levin said to himself, as he went
back to the carriage that had sunk in the mire. ‘What did
you drive in for?’ he said to him dryly, and calling the
coachman, he began pulling the horses out.
Levin was vexed both at being hindered from shooting
and at his horses getting stuck in the mud, and still more at
the fact that neither Stepan Arkadyevitch nor Veslovsky
helped him and the coachman to unharness the horses and
get them out, since neither of them had the slightest
notion of harnessing. Without vouchsafing a syllable in
reply to Vassenka’s protestations that it had been quite dry
there, Levin worked in silence with the coachman at
extricating the horses. But then, as he got warm at the
work and saw how assiduously Veslovsky was tugging at
the wagonette by one of the mud-guards, so that he broke
it indeed, Levin blamed himself for having under the
influence of yesterday’s feelings been too cold to
Veslovsky, and tried to be particularly genial so as to
smooth over his chilliness. When everything had been put

1258 of 1759