Page 568 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

succeeded in regaining her strength after the scarlatina, and
also as a means of escaping the petty humiliations, the little
bills owing to the wood-merchant, the fishmonger, the
shoemaker, which made her miserable. Besides this, she

was pleased to go away to the country because she was
dreaming of getting her sister Kitty to stay with her there.
Kitty was to be back from abroad in the middle of the
summer, and bathing had been prescribed for her. Kitty
wrote that no prospect was so alluring as to spend the
summer with Dolly at Ergushovo, full of childish
associations for both of them.
The first days of her existence in the country were very
hard for Dolly. She used to stay in the country as a child,
and the impression she had retained of it was that the
country was a refuge from all the unpleasantness of the
town, that life there, though not luxurious—Dolly could
easily make up her mind to that—was cheap and
comfortable; that there was plenty of everything,
everything was cheap, everything could be got, and
children were happy. But now coming to the country as
the head of a family, she perceived that it was all utterly
unlike what she had fancied.
The day after their arrival there was a heavy fall of rain
and in the night the water came through in the corridor

567 of 1759