A good-looking girl in galoshes, swinging her empty pails on the yoke, ran to get him water from the well.
"Lively there," gayly shouted the old man to her; and then he turned to Levin. "So, sir, you are going to see Nikolaï Ivanovitch Sviazhsky? He often stops with us," he began to say in his garrulous style, as he leaned on the balustrade of the steps. But just as he was in the midst of telling about his acquaintance with Sviazhsky, again the gate creaked on its hinges, and the workmen came in from the fields with their harrows and wooden-plows. The horses attached to them were fat and in good condition. The laborers evidently belonged to the family: two were young fellows, and wore colored cotton shirts, and caps. The other two were hired men, and wore shabby shirts: one was an old man, the other middle-aged.
The old peasant, starting down from the porch, went to the horses and began to unharness them.
"Where have you been plowing?"
"In the potato-fields. We've finished with one. .... You, Fyodot, don't bring the gelding, but leave him at the trough; we'll harness another."
"Say, batyushka, shall I tell 'em to take out the plow-shares, or to bring 'em?" asked a big-framed, healthy-looking lad,evidently the old peasant's son.
"Put 'em in the drags," replied the old man, coiling up the reins and throwing them on the ground. "Put things in order; then we'11 have dinner."
The handsome girl in galoshes came back to the house with her brimming pails swinging from her shoulders. Other women appeared from different quarters,—some young and comely, others old and ugly, with children and without children.
The samovar began to sing on the stove. The workmen and the men of the household, having taken out their horses, came in to dinner. Levin, sending for his provisions from the tarantas, begged the old peasant to take tea with him.
"Well, I have already drunk my tea," said the old
