rries; others, tired of
eating raspberries, were strolling about the strawberry beds or
foraging among the sugar-peas. A little on one side of the raspberry
bed, near a branching appletree propped up by posts which had been
pulled out of an old fence, Pyotr Dmitritch was mowing the grass.
His hair was falling over his forehead, his cravat was untied. His
watch-chain was hanging loose. Every step and every swing of the
scythe showed skill and the possession of immense physical strength.
Near him were standing Lubotchka and the daughters of a neighbour,
Colonel Bukryeev--two anaemic and unhealthily stout fair girls,
Natalya and Valentina, or, as they were always called, Nata and
Vata, both wearing white frocks and strikingly like each other.
Pyotr Dmitritch was teaching them to mow.

"It's very simple," he said. "You have only to know how to hold the
scythe and not to get too hot over it--that is, not to use more
force than is necessary! Like this. . . . Wouldn't you like to try?"
he said, offering the scythe to Lubotchka. "Come!"

Lubotchka took the scythe clumsily, blushed crimson, and laughed.

"Don't be afraid, Lubov Alexandrovna!" cried Olga Mihalovna, loud
enough for all the ladies to hear that she was with them. "Don't
be afraid! You must learn! If you marry a Tolstoyan he will make
you mow."

Lubotchka raised the scythe, but began laughing again, and, helpless
with laughter, let go of it at once. She was ashamed and pleased
at being talked to as though grown up. Nata, with a cold, serious
face, with no trace of smiling or shyness, took the scythe, swung
it and caught it in the grass; Vata, also without a smile, as cold
and serious as her sister, took the scythe, and silently thrust it
into the earth. Having done this, the two sisters linked arms and
walked in silence to the raspberries.

Pyotr Dmitritch laughed and played about like a boy, and this
childish, frolicsome mood in which he became exceedingly good-natured
suited him far better than any other. Olga Mihalovna loved him when
he was like that. But his boyishness did not usually last long. It
did not this time; after playing with the scythe, he for some reason
thought it necessary to take a serious tone about it.

"When I am mowing, I feel, do you know, healthier and more normal,"
he said. "If I were forced to confine myself to an intellectual
life I believe I should go out of my mind. I feel that I was not
born to be a man of culture! I ought to mo