turning over the pamphlets with a trembling
hand, "or else you won't understand. Before you read my objections,
you must know what I am objecting to. But it's all nonsense . . .
tiresome stuff. Besides, I believe it's bedtime."

Tanya went away. Yegor Semyonitch sat down on the sofa by Kovrin
and heaved a deep sigh.

"Yes, my boy . . ." he began after a pause. "That's how it is, my
dear lecturer. Here I write articles, and take part in exhibitions,
and receive medals. . . . Pesotsky, they say, has apples the size
of a head, and Pesotsky, they say, has made his fortune with his
garden. In short, 'Kotcheby is rich and glorious.' But one asks
oneself: what is it all for? The garden is certainly fine, a model.
It's not really a garden, but a regular institution, which is of
the greatest public importance because it marks, so to say, a new
era in Russian agriculture and Russian industry. But, what's it
for? What's the object of it?"

"The fact speaks for itself."

"I do not mean in that sense. I meant to ask: what will happen to
the garden when I die? In the condition in which you see it now,
it would not be maintained for one month without me. The whole
secret of success lies not in its being a big garden or a great
number of labourers being employed in it, but in the fact that I
love the work. Do you understand? I love it perhaps more than myself.
Look at me; I do everything myself. I work from morning to night:
I do all the grafting myself, the pruning myself, the planting
myself. I do it all myself: when any one helps me I am jealous and
irritable till I am rude. The whole secret lies in loving it--
that is, in the sharp eye of the master; yes, and in the master's
hands, and in the feeling that makes one, when one goes anywhere
for an hour's visit, sit, ill at ease, with one's heart far away,
afraid that something may have happened in the garden. But when I
die, who will look after it? Who will work? The gardener? The
labourers? Yes? But I will tell you, my dear fellow, the worst enemy
in the garden is not a hare, not a cockchafer, and not the frost,
but any outside person."

"And Tanya?" asked Kovrin, laughing. "She can't be more harmful
than a hare? She loves the work and understands it."

"Yes, she loves it and understands it. If after my death the garden
goes to her and she is the mistress, of course nothing better could
be wished. But if, which God forbid, she should marry," Yegor
Semyonitch whispered, and