Page 1319 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 17

The coachman pulled up his four horses and looked
round to the right, to a field of rye, where some peasants
were sitting on a cart. The counting house clerk was just
going to jump down, but on second thoughts he shouted
peremptorily to the peasants instead, and beckoned to
them to come up. The wind, that seemed to blow as they
drove, dropped when the carriage stood still; gadflies
settled on the steaming horses that angrily shook them off.
The metallic clank of a whetstone against a scythe, that
came to them from the cart, ceased. One of the peasants
got up and came towards the carriage.
‘Well, you are slow!’ the counting house clerk shouted
angrily to the peasant who was stepping slowly with his
bare feet over the ruts of the rough dry road. ‘Come
along, do!’
A curly-headed old man with a bit of bast tied round
his hair, and his bent back dark with perspiration, came
towards the carriage, quickening his steps, and took hold
of the mud-guard with his sunburnt hand.
‘Vozdvizhenskoe, the manor house? the count’s?’ he
repeated; ‘go on to the end of this track. Then turn to the

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