Page 1710 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

machine he told him to put it in more slowly. ‘You put in
too much at a time, Fyodor. Do you see—it gets choked,
that’s why it isn’t getting on. Do it evenly.’
Fyodor, black with the dust that clung to his moist face,

shouted something in response, but still went on doing it
as Levin did not want him to.
Levin, going up to the machine, moved Fyodor aside,
and began feeding the corn in himself. Working on till the
peasants’ dinner hour, which was not long in coming, he
went out of the barn with Fyodor and fell into talk with
him, stopping beside a neat yellow sheaf of rye laid on the
thrashing floor for seed.
Fyodor came from a village at some distance from the
one in which Levin had once allotted land to his
cooperative association. Now it had been let to a former
house porter.
Levin talked to Fyodor about this land and asked
whether Platon, a well-to-do peasant of good character
belonging to the same village, would not take the land for
the coming year.
‘It’s a high rent; it wouldn’t pay Platon, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch,’ answered the peasant, picking the ears off
his sweat-drenched shirt.
‘But how does Kirillov make it pay?’

1709 of 1759