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After the departure of the doctor, he wanted to go with a fishing

rod to the river. Sergey Ivanovitch was fond of angling, and was,

it seemed, proud of being able to care for such a stupid

occupation.

Konstantin Levin, whose presence was needed in the plough land

and meadows, had come to take his brother in the trap.

It was that time of the year, the turning-point of summer, when

the crops of the present year are a certainty, when one begins to

think of the sowing for next year, and the mowing is at hand;

when the rye is all in ear, though its ears are still light, not

yet full, and it waves in gray-green billows in the wind; when

the green oats, with tufts of yellow grass scattered here and

there among it, droop irregularly over the late-sown fields; when

the early buckwheat is already out and hiding the ground; when

the fallow lands, trodden hard as stone by the cattle, are half

ploughed over, with paths left untouched by the plough; when from

the dry dung-heaps carted onto the fields there comes at sunset a

smell of manure mixed with meadow-sweet, and on the low-lying

lands the riverside meadows are a thick sea of grass waiting for

the mowing, with blackened heaps of the stalks of sorrel among

it.