jacket loosened, was as gay, jocose, free in his movements as ever.
They kept finding birch-mushrooms in the woods, lurking in the juicy grass and cut off by the scythes. But the elder bent down whenever he saw one, and, picking it, put it in his breast.
"Still another little present for my old woman," he would say.
Easy as it was to mow the tender and soft grass, it was hard to climb and descend the steep sides of the ravine. But the elder did not let this appear. Always lightly swinging his scythe, he climbed with short, firm steps, and his feet shod in huge lapti, or bast shoes, though he trembled with his whole body, and his drawers were slipping down below his shirt, he let nothing escape him, not an herb or a mushroom; and he never ceased to joke with Levin and the muzhiks.
Levin went behind him, and more than once felt that he would surely drop, trying to climb, scythe in hand, this steep hillside, where even unencumbered it would be hard to go. But he persevered all the same, and did what was required. He felt as if some interior force sustained him.
CHAPTER VI
The men had mowed the Mashkin Verkh, they had finished the last rows, and had taken their kaftans, and were gayly going home. Levin mounted his horse and regretfully took leave of his companions. On the hilltop he turned round to take a last look; but the evening's mist, rising from the bottoms, hid them from sight; but he could hear their loud, happy voices and laughter and the sound of their clinging scythes.
Sergyeï Ivanovitch had long finished dinner, and, sitting in his room, was taking iced lemonade, and reading the papers and reviews which had just come from the post, when Levin, with his disordered hair matted down on his brow with perspiration, and with his back
