Page 145 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 19

When Anna went into the room, Dolly was sitting in
the little drawing-room with a white-headed fat little boy,
already like his father, giving him a lesson in French
reading. As the boy read, he kept twisting and trying to
tear off a button that was nearly off his jacket. His mother
had several times taken his hand from it, but the fat little
hand went back to the button again. His mother pulled
the button off and put it in her pocket.
‘Keep your hands still, Grisha,’ she said, and she took
up her work, a coverlet she had long been making. She
always set to work on it at depressed moments, and now
she knitted at it nervously, twitching her fingers and
counting the stitches. Though she had sent word the day
before to her husband that it was nothing to her whether
his sister came or not, she had made everything ready for
her arrival, and was expecting her sister-in-law with
emotion.
Dolly was crushed by her sorrow, utterly swallowed up
by it. Still she did not forget that Anna, her sister-in-law,
was the wife of one of the most important personages in
Petersburg, and was a Petersburg grande dame. And,

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