Early in June Agathya Mikhailovna, the old nurse and housekeeper, in carrying to the cellar a jar of mushrooms she had just pickled, happened to slip, fall and sprain her wrist. The district doctor, a talkative young medico who had just finished his studies, came to see her. He examined the wrist, said it was not luxated, bandaged it, and being asked to dinner evidently was delighted at a chance of talking to the celebrated Sergei Ivanovich Koznishev, and to show his advanced views of things told him all the scandal of the district, complaining of the poor state into which the Zemstvo affairs had fallen. Sergei Ivanovich listened attentively, asked him questions, and, roused by a new listener, he talked fluently, uttered a few keen and weighty observations, respectfully appreciated by the young doctor, and was soon in that animated frame of mind his brother knew so well, which always, with him, followed a brilliant and animated conversation. After the departure of the doctor, he wanted to go with a fishing rod to the river. Sergei Ivanovich was fond of angling, and was, it seemed, proud of being able to care for such a stupid occupation.

Konstantin Levin, whose presence was needed in the plowland and the meadows, had come to take his brother in the cabriolet.

It was that time of the year, the turning point of summer, when the crops of the present year are a certainty, when one begins to think of the sowing for next year, and the mowing is at hand; when the rye is all in ear, though its ears are still light, not yet full, and it waves in gray-green billows in the wind; when the green oats, with tufts of yellow grass scattered here and there among it, droop irregularly over the late-sown fields; when the early buckwheat is already out and hiding the ground; when the fallow lands, trodden hard as stone by the cattle, are half-plowed over, with paths left untouched by the plow; when the odor from the dry manure heaps carted into the fields mingles at sunset with the smell of meadowsweet, and on the low-lying lands the preserved meadows are a thick sea of grass waiting for the mowing, with blackened heaps of sorrel stalks among it.

It was the time when there comes a brief pause in the toil of the fields before the beginning of the labors of harvest - every year recurring, every year claiming all the peasant's thews. The crop was a splendid one, and bright, hot summer days had set in with short, dewy nights.

The brothers had to drive through the woods to reach the meadows. Sergei Ivanovich was all the while admiring the beauty of the woods, which were a tangled mass of leaves, pointing out to his brother now an old lime tree on the point of flowering, dark on the shady side, and brightly spotted with yellow stipules, now the young shoots of this year's saplings brilliant with emerald. Konstantin Levin did not like talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him took away the beauty of what he saw. He assented to what his brother said, but could not help thinking of other things. When they came out of the woods, all his attention was engrossed by the view of the fallow land on the upland, in parts yellow with grass, in parts trampled and checkered with furrows, in parts dotted with ridges of manure, and in parts even plowed. A string of telegas was moving across it. Levin counted the telegas, and was pleased that all that were wanted had been brought, and at the sight of the meadows his thoughts passed to the mowing. He always felt something peculiar moving him to the quick at haymaking. On reaching the meadow Levin stopped the horse.

The morning dew was still lying on the thick undergrowth of the grass, and, that he might not get his feet wet, Sergei Ivanovich asked his brother to drive him in the cabriolet up to the willow tree from which the perch were caught. Sorry as Konstantin Levin was to crush down his mowing grass, he drove him into the meadow. The high grass softly turned about the wheels and the horse's legs, leaving its seeds clinging to the wet axles and spokes of the wheels.

His brother seated himself under a bush, arranging his tackle, while Levin led the horse away, tied him up and walked into the vast gray-green sea of grass unstirred by the wind. The silky grass with its ripe seeds came almost to his waist in the riverside spots.

Crossing the meadow, Konstantin Levin came out on the road, and met an old man with a swollen eye, carrying a swarming basket with bees.

`What? Taken a stray swarm, Fomich?' he asked.

`No, indeed, Konstantin Mitrich! All we can do to keep our own! This is the second new swarm that has flown away.... Luckily the lads caught them. They were plowing your field. They unyoked the horses and galloped after them.'

`Well, what do you say, Fomich - start mowing or wait a bit?'

`Well, now! Our way's to wait till St. Peter's Day. But you always mow sooner. Well, to be sure, please God, the hay's good. There'll be plenty for the beasts.'

`What do you think about the weather?'

`That's in God's hands. Maybe even the weather will favor us.'

Levin walked up to his brother.

Sergei Ivanovich had caught nothing, but he was not bored, and seemed in the most cheerful frame of mind. Levin saw that, stimulated by his conversation with the doctor, he wanted to talk. Levin, on the other hand, would have liked to get home as soon as possible, to give orders about getting together the mowers for next day, and to set at rest his doubts about the mowing, which greatly absorbed him.

`Well, let's be going,' he said.

`Why be in such a hurry? Let's stay a little. But how wet you are! Even though one catches nothing, it's fine. That's the best thing about every part of sport, that one has to do with nature. How exquisite this steely water is!' said Sergei Ivanovich. `These riverside banks always remind me of the riddle - do you know it? ``The grass says to the river: we quiver and we quiver.''

`I don't know the riddle,' answered Levin cheerlessly.