Page 531 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 3

‘Do you know I’ve been thinking about you,’ said
Sergey Ivanovitch. ‘It’s beyond everything what’s being
done in the district, according to what this doctor tells me.
He’s a very intelligent fellow. And as I’ve told you before,
I tell you again: it’s not right for you not to go to the
meetings, and altogether to keep out of the district
business. If decent people won’t go into it, of course it’s
bound to go all wrong. We pay the money, and it all goes
in salaries, and there are no schools, nor district nurses, nor
midwives, nor drugstores— nothing.’
‘Well, I did try, you know,’ Levin said slowly and
unwillingly. ‘I can’t! and so there’s no help for it.’
‘But why can’t you? I must own I can’t make it out.
Idifference, incapacity—I won’t admit; surely it’s not
simply laziness?’
‘None of those things. I’ve tried, and I see I can do
nothing,’ said Levin.
He had hardly grasped what his brother was saying.
Looking towards the plough land across the river, he made
out something black, but he could not distinguish whether
it was a horse or the bailiff on horseback.

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