Page 345 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

soon be sowing?’ ‘We must get the ploughing done first,
Konstantin Dmitrievitch,’ answered Ipat. The further he
rode, the happier he became, and plans for the land rose to
his mind each better than the last; to plant all his fields

with hedges along the southern borders, so that the snow
should not lie under them; to divide them up into six
fields of arable and three of pasture and hay; to build a
cattle yard at the further end of the estate, and to dig a
pond and to construct movable pens for the cattle as a
means of manuring the land. And then eight hundred
acres of wheat, three hundred of potatoes, and four
hundred of clover, and not one acre exhausted.
Absorbed in such dreams, carefully keeping his horse by
the hedges, so as not to trample his young crops, he rode
up to the laborers who had been sent to sow clover. A cart
with the seed in it was standing, not at the edge, but in the
middle of the crop, and the winter corn had been torn up
by the wheels and trampled by the horse. Both the
laborers were sitting in the hedge, probably smoking a
pipe together. The earth in the cart, with which the seed
was mixed, was not crushed to powder, but crusted
together or adhering in clods. Seeing the master, the
laborer, Vassily, went towards the cart, while Mishka set
to work sowing. This was not as it should be, but with the

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