Page 1720 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 13

And Levin remembered a scene he had lately witnessed
between Dolly and her children. The children, left to
themselves, had begun cooking raspberries over the
candles and squirting milk into each other’s mouths with a
syringe. Their mother, catching them at these pranks,
began reminding them in Levin’s presence of the trouble
their mischief gave to the grown-up people, and that this
trouble was all for their sake, and that if they smashed the
cups they would have nothing to drink their tea out of,
and that if they wasted the milk, they would have nothing
to eat, and die of hunger.
And Levin had been struck by the passive, weary
incredulity with which the children heard what their
mother said to them. They were simply annoyed that their
amusing play had been interrupted, and did not believe a
word of what their mother was saying. They could not
believe it indeed, for they could not take in the immensity
of all they habitually enjoyed, and so could not conceive
that what they were destroying was the very thing they
lived by.

1719 of 1759