w, plough, sow, drive out
the horses."

And Pyotr Dmitritch began a conversation with the ladies about the
advantages of physical labour, about culture, and then about the
pernicious effects of money, of property. Listening to her husband,
Olga Mihalovna, for some reason, thought of her dowry.

"And the time will come, I suppose," she thought, "when he will not
forgive me for being richer than he. He is proud and vain. Maybe
he will hate me because he owes so much to me."

She stopped near Colonel Bukryeev, who was eating raspberries and
also taking part in the conversation.

"Come," he said, making room for Olga Mihalovna and Pyotr Dmitritch.
"The ripest are here. . . . And so, according to Proudhon," he went
on, raising his voice, "property is robbery. But I must confess I
don't believe in Proudhon, and don't consider him a philosopher.
The French are not authorities, to my thinking--God bless them!"

"Well, as for Proudhons and Buckles and the rest of them, I am weak
in that department," said Pyotr Dmitritch. "For philosophy you must
apply to my wife. She has been at University lectures and knows all
your Schopenhauers and Proudhons by heart. . . ."

Olga Mihalovna felt bored again. She walked again along a little
path by apple and pear trees, and looked again as though she was
on some very important errand. She reached the gardener's cottage.
In the doorway the gardener's wife, Varvara, was sitting together
with her four little children with big shaven heads. Varvara, too,
was with child and expecting to be confined on Elijah's Day. After
greeting her, Olga Mihalovna looked at her and the children in
silence and asked:

"Well, how do you feel?"

"Oh, all right. . . ."

A silence followed. The two women seemed to understand each other
without words.

"It's dreadful having one's first baby," said Olga Mihalovna after
a moment's thought. "I keep feeling as though I shall not get through
it, as though I shall die."

"I fancied that, too, but here I am alive. One has all sorts of
fancies."

Varvara, who was just going to have her fifth, looked down a little
on her mistress from the height of her experience and spoke in a
rather didactic tone, and Olga Mihalovna could not help feeling her
authority; she would have liked to have talked of her fears, of the
child, of her sensations, but she was afraid it might strike Varvara
as naive and trivial. And she waited in silence for Varvara to say
something herse