eous view over the green valley with
trees, churches, flocks, and she began begging her husband to buy a
small piece of ground and to build them a cottage on it. Her husband
agreed. They bought sixty acres of land, and on the high bank in a
field, where in earlier days the cows of Obrutchanovo used to wander,
they built a pretty house of two storeys with a terrace and a verandah,
with a tower and a flagstaff on which a flag fluttered on Sundays--they
built it in about three months, and then all the winter they were
planting big trees, and when spring came and everything began to be
green there were already avenues to the new house, a gardener and two
labourers in white aprons were digging near it, there was a little
fountain, and a globe of looking-glass flashed so brilliantly that it
was painful to look at. The house had already been named the New Villa.

On a bright, warm morning at the end of May two horses were brought to
Obrutchanovo to the village blacksmith, Rodion Petrov. They came from
the New Villa. The horses were sleek, graceful beasts, as white as snow,
and strikingly alike.

"Perfect swans!" said Rodion, gazing at them with reverent admiration.

His wife Stepanida, his children and grandchildren came out into the
street to look at them. By degrees a crowd collected. The Lytchkovs,
father and son, both men with swollen faces and entirely beardless, came
up bareheaded. Kozov, a tall, thin old man with a long, narrow beard,
came up leaning on a stick with a crook handle: he kept winking with his
crafty eyes and smiling ironically as though he knew something.

"It's only that they are white; what is there in them?" he said. "Put
mine on oats, and they will be just as sleek. They ought to be in a
plough and with a whip, too...."

The coachman simply looked at him with disdain, but did not utter a
word. And afterwards, while they were blowing up the fire at the forge,
the coachman talked while he smoked cigarettes. The peasants learned
from him various details: his employers were wealthy people; his
mistress, Elena Ivanovna, had till her marriage lived in Moscow in a
poor way as a governess; she was kind-hearted, compassionate, and fond
of helping the poor. On the new estate, he told them, they were not
going to plough or to sow, but simply to live for their pleasure, live
only to breathe the fresh air. When he had finished and led the horses
back a crowd of boys followed him, the dogs barked, and Kozov, loo