pleasant it was for the princess to visit her daughters, and however necessary she felt that she was, nevertheless both she and her husband had been very sad ever since they had given up their last beloved daughter and the family nest had become empty.
"What is it, Agafya Mikhaïlovna?" suddenly asked Kitty of the old housekeeper, whom she saw standing near with a mysterious and significant look in her eyes.
"It is about supper."
"Now, that is excellent," said Dolly. "You go and make your arrangements, and I will hear Grisha recite his lesson. He has not done anything all day."
"The lesson is my part! No, Dolly, I will go," cried Levin, springing up.
Grisha, who had already entered the gymnasium, was obliged to keep up his lessons during the summer. Darya Aleksandrovna, who had already begun, in Moscow, to study Latin with her son, now that she had come to the Levins', had made it a rule to go over with him, at least once a day, his most difficult lessons in Latin and arithmetic. Levin had taken it on himself to substitute for her. But the mother, having once listened while Levin was hearing the recitation, and noticing that he did not teach as the instructor in Moscow did, with an awkward attempt not to hurt his feelings, told Levin decidedly that he must go according to the book, as his tutor did, and that she had better take charge of the lessons again.
Levin was annoyed with Stepan Arkadyevitch, owing to whose carelessness the mother had charge of the children's education, though she understood nothing about it at all; and he was annoyed with the teachers, because they had such bad methods of teaching. But he promised his sister-in-law that he would conduct the recitations as she wished. And so he continued to take charge of Grisha's studies, no longer, however, in his own method, but according to the book, and therefore perfunctorily, and frequently forgetting the lesson-hour. And that is what had happened that day.
"No, I will go, Dolly, and you keep your seat," said
