"Why not cut it?
Come on, Tit!
We'll look sharp!
We can eat at night.
Come on!" cried voices, and eating up their bread, the mowers went back to work.
"Come, lads, keep it up!" said Tit, and ran on ahead almost at a trot.
"Get along, get along!" said the old man, hurrying after him and easily overtaking him, "I'll mow you down, look out!"
And young and old mowed away, as though they were racing with one another.
But however fast they worked, they did not spoil the grass, and the rows were laid just as neatly and exactly.
The little piece left uncut in the corner was mown in five minutes.
The last of the mowers were just ending their rows while the foremost snatched up their coats onto their shoulders, and crossed the road towards Mashkin Upland.
The sun was already sinking into the trees when they went with their jingling dippers into the wooded ravine of Mashkin Upland.
The grass was up to their waists in the middle of the hollow, soft, tender, and feathery, spotted here and there among the trees with wild heart's-ease.
After a brief consultation--whether to take the rows lengthwise or diagonally--Prohor Yermilin, also a renowned mower, a huge, black-haired peasant, went on ahead.
He went up to the top, turned back again and started mowing, and they all proceeded to form in line behind him, going downhill through the hollow and uphill right up to the edge of the forest.
The sun sank behind the forest.
The dew was falling by now; the mowers were in the sun only on the hillside, but below, where a mist was rising, and on the opposite side, they mowed into the fresh, dewy shade.
The work went rapidly.
The grass cut with a juicy sound, and was at once laid in high, fragrant rows.
The mowers from all sides, brought closer together in the short row, kept urging one another on to the sound of jingling dippers and clanging scythes, and the hiss of the whetstones sharpening them, and good-humored shouts.
Levin still kept between the young peasant and the old man.
The old man, who had put on his short sheepskin jacket, was just as good-humored, jocose, and free in his movements.
Among the trees they were continually cutting with their scythes the so-called "birch mushrooms," swollen fat in the succulent grass.
But the old man bent down every time he came across a mushroom, picked it up and put it in his bosom.
"Another present for my old woman," he said as he did so.
Easy as it was to mow the wet, soft grass, it was hard work going up and down the steep sides of the ravine.
But this did not trouble the old man.
Swinging his scythe just as ever, and moving his feet in their big, plaited shoes with firm, little steps, he climbed slowly up the steep place, and though his breeches hanging out below his smock, and his whole frame trembled with effort, he did not miss one blade of grass or one mushroom on his way, and kept making jokes with the peasants and Levin.
Levin walked after him and often thought he must fall, as he climbed with a scythe up a steep cliff where it would have been hard work to clamber without anything. But he climbed up and did what he had to do.
He felt as though some external force were moving him.
Chapter 6
Mashkin Upland was mown, the last row finished, the peasants had put on their coats and were gaily trudging home.
Levin got on his horse and, parting regretfully from the peasants, rode homewards.
On the hillside he looked back; he could not see them in the mist that had risen from the valley; he could only hear rough, good-humored voices, laughter, and the sound of clanking scythes.
Sergey Ivanovitch had long ago finished dinner, and was drinking iced lemon and water in his own room, looking through the reviews and papers which he had only just received by post, when Levin rushed into the room, talking merrily, with his wet and matted hair sticking to his forehead, and his back and chest grimed and moist.
"We mowed the whole meadow!
Oh, it is nice, delicious!
And how have you been getting on?" said Levin, completely forgetting the disagreeable conversation of the previous day.
"Mercy! what do you look like!" said Sergey Ivanovitch, for the first moment looking round with some dissatisfaction. "And the door, do shut the door!" he cried. "You must have let in a dozen at least."
Sergey Ivanovitch could not endure flies, and in his own room he never opened the window except at night, and carefully kept the door shut.
"Not one, on my honor.
But if I have, I'll catch them.
You wouldn't believe what a pleasure it is!
How have you spent the day?"
"Very well.
But have you really been mowing the whole day?
I expect you're as hungry as a wolf.
Kouzma has got everything ready for you."
"No, I don't feel hungry even.
I had something to eat there.