CHAPTER II.
Kolya Gladishev was a fine, merry, bashful young lad, with a large
head; pink-cheeked, with a funny little white, bent line, as
though from milk, upon his upper lip, under the light down of the
moustache, sprouting through for the first time; with gray, naive
eyes, placed far apart; and so closely cropped, that from
underneath his flaxen little bristles the skin glistened through,
just as with a thoroughbred Yorkshire suckling pig. It was
precisely he with whom Jennka during the past winter had played
either at maternal relations, or at dolls; and thrust upon him a
little apple or a couple of bon-bons on his way, when he would be
going away from the house of ill repute, squirming from shame.
This time, when he came, there could at once be felt in him, after
long living in camps, that rapid change in age, which so often
imperceptibly and rapidly transforms a boy into a youth. He had
already finished the cadet academy and with pride counted himself
a junker; although he still walked around in a cadet's uniform,
with aversion. He had grown taller, had become better formed and
more adroit; the camp life had done him good.
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