all. "Well, you didn't expect me, eh?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting out of the sledge, splashed with mud on the bridge of his nose, on his cheek, and on his eyebrows, but radiant with health and good spirits. "I've come to see you in the first place," he said, embracing and kissing him, "to have some stand-shooting second, and to sell the forest at Ergushovo third." "Delightful! What a spring we're having! How ever did you get along in a sledge?" "In a cart it would have been worse still, Konstantin Dmitrievitch," answered the driver, who knew him. "Well, I'm very, very glad to see you," said Levin, with a genuine smile of childlike delight. Levin led his friend to the room set apart for visitors, where Stepan Arkadyevitch's things were carried also--a bag, a gun in a case, a satchel for cigars. Leaving him there to wash and change his clothes, Levin went off to the counting house to speak about the ploughing and clover. Agafea Mihalovna, always very anxious for the credit of the house, met him in the hall with inquiries about dinner. "Do just as you like, only let it be as soon as possible," he said, and went to the bailiff. When he came back, Stepan Arkadyevitch, washed and combed, came