The Roadside Counterexample — Anna Karenina

Levin drives his own horses through the Surovsky district because there is no railway or post service, and stops halfway at a prosperous peasant yard to feed them. A bald patriarch with a red beard welcomes him into a spotless parlor while a young woman in clogs scrubs the floor, shrieks at Levin's dog, then laughs at herself. Over samovar tea the old man describes a farm that sounds troubled but is plainly thriving: he bought land at thirty-five roubles an acre, married three sons and a nephew, rebuilt after fires, uses a modern plough, and saves thinned rye for his horses while Levin's estate wastes the same fodder.

When Levin admits landowners manage poorly with laborers, the peasant answers that Sviazhsky's first-rate land still yields little because it is neglected, yet here hired hands work because everyone goes into the fields together and useless men are sent away. Levin glimpses the family at dinner, women serving, everyone laughing over pudding and cabbage soup, and the young woman in clogs laughing loudest.

The household's ease haunts him. He probably reads too much into her handsome face, but the whole scene feels like proof that peasant prosperity is not a fantasy born on his haycock. All the way to Sviazhsky's he keeps returning to this farm as if it holds an answer his own quarrelsome management has missed.