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, looking
after him, winked sarcastically.

"Landowners, too-oo!" he said. "They have built a house and set up
horses, but I bet they are nobodies--landowners, too-oo."

Kozov for some reason took a dislike from the first to the new house,
to the white horses, and to the handsome, well-fed coachman. Kozov was
a solitary man, a widower; he had a dreary life (he was prevented from
working by a disease which he sometimes called a rupture and sometimes
worms) he was maintained by his son, who worked at a confectioner's
in Harkov and sent him money; and from early morning till evening he
sauntered at leisure about the river or about the village; if he saw,
for instance, a peasant carting a log, or fishing, he would say: "That
log's dry wood--it is rotten," or, "They won't bite in weather like
this." In times of drought he would declare that there would not be a
drop of rain till the frost came; and when the rains came he would say
that everything would rot in the fields, that everything was ruined. And
as he said these things he would wink as though he knew something.

At the New Villa they burned Bengal lights and sent up fireworks in the
evenings, and a sailing-boat with red lanterns floated by Obrutchanovo.
One morning the engineer's wife, Elena Ivanovna, and her little daughter
drove to the village in a carriage with yellow wheels and a pair of dark
bay ponies; both mother and daughter were wearing broad-brimmed straw
hats, bent down over their ears.

This was exactly at the time when they were carting manure, and the