meadows, and the river were so lovely, yet there were memories of
the peasants, of their carts, of the engineer. Masha and I drove
out together in the racing droshky to the fields to look at the
oats. She used to drive, I sat behind; her shoulders were raised
and the wind played with her hair.

"Keep to the right!" she shouted to those she met.

"You are like a sledge-driver," I said to her one day.

"Maybe! Why, my grandfather, the engineer's father, was a sledge-driver.
Didn't you know that?" she asked, turning to me, and at once she
mimicked the way sledge-drivers shout and sing.

"And thank God for that," I thought as I listened to her. "Thank
God."

And again memories of the peasants, of the carts, of the engineer. . . .

XIII

Dr. Blagovo arrived on his bicycle. My sister began coming often.
Again there were conversations about manual labour, about progress,
about a mysterious millennium awaiting mankind in the remote future.
The doctor did not like our farmwork, because it interfered with
arguments, and said that ploughing, reaping, grazing calves were
unworthy of a free man, and all these coarse forms of the struggle
for existence men would in time relegate to animals and machines,
while they would devote themselves exclusively to scientific
investigation. My sister kept begging them to let her go home