“Thank you, thank you!” he replied to his congratulations. “Well, are you going to plough soon?”

“The boys have gone out, the boys have,” replied Iván Fedótov, more timidly even than before. He supposed that Iván Petróvich knew whither the Izlegóshcha peasants had gone out to plough. “It is damp, though. Damp it is. It is early yet, early it is.”

Iván Petróvich went up to his parents’ monument, bowed to it, and went back to be helped into his six-in-hand with an outrider.

“Well, thank God,” he said to himself, swaying on the soft, round springs and looking at the vernal sky with the scattering clouds, at the bared earth and the white spots of unmelted snow, and at the tightly braided tail of a side horse, and inhaling the fresh spring air, which was particularly pleasant after the air in the church.