"I beg your pardon!"

Her uncle for the last time made her a ceremonious bow, a little
on one side, and, shrinking into himself, made a scrape with his
foot and walked back.

"Idiot!" thought Olga Mihalovna. "I hope he will go home."

She found the ladies and the young people among the raspberries in
the kitchen garden. Some were eating raspberries; others, tired of
eating raspberries, were strolling about the strawberry beds or
foraging among the sugar-peas. A little on one side of the raspberry
bed, near a branching appletree propped up by posts which had been
pulled out of an old fence, Pyotr Dmitritch was mowing the grass.
His hair was falling over his forehead, his cravat was untied. His
watch-chain was hanging loose. Every step and every swing of the
scythe showed skill and the possession of immense physical strength.
Near him were standing Lubotchka and the daughters of a neighbour,
Colonel Bukryeev--two anaemic and unhealthily stout fair girls,
Natalya and Valentina, or, as they were always called, Nata and
Vata, both wearing white frocks and strikingly like each other.
Pyotr Dmitritch was teaching them to mow.

"It's very simple," he said. "You have only to know how to hold the
scythe and not to get too hot over it--that is, not to use more
force than is necessary! Like this. . . . Wouldn't you like to try?"
he said, offering the scythe to Lubotchka. "Come!"

Lubotchka took the scythe clumsily, blushed crimson, and laughed.