Woloda enters the anteroom with a beaming face, and embraces myself, Lubotshka, Mimi, and Katenka—­the latter blushing to her ears.  He hardly knows himself for joy.  And how smart he looks in that uniform!  How well the blue collar suits his budding, dark moustache!  What a tall, elegant figure is his, and what a distinguished walk!

On that memorable day we all lunched together in Grandmamma’s room.  Every face expressed delight, and with the dessert which followed the meal the servants, with grave but gratified faces, brought in bottles of champagne.

Grandmamma, for the first time since Mamma’s death, drank a full glass of the wine to Woloda’s health, and wept for joy as she looked at him.

Henceforth Woloda drove his own turn-out, invited his own friends, smoked, and went to balls.  On one occasion, I even saw him sharing a couple of bottles of champagne with some guests in his room, and the whole company drinking a toast, with each glass, to some mysterious being, and then quarrelling as to who should have the bottom of the bottle!

Nevertheless he always lunched at home, and after the meal would stretch himself on a sofa and talk confidentially to Katenka:  yet from what I overheard (while pretending, of course, to pay no attention) I gathered that they were only talking of the heroes and heroines of novels which they had read, or else of jealousy and love, and so on.  Never could I understand what they found so attractive in these conversations, nor why they smiled so happily and discussed things with such animation.

Altogether I could see that, in addition to the friendship natural to persons who had been companions from childhood, there existed between Woloda and Katenka a relation which differentiated them from us, and united them mysteriously to one another.

XXI.  KATENKA AND LUBOTSHKA

Katenka was now sixteen years old—­quite a grown-up girl; and although at that age the angular figures, the bashfulness, and the gaucherie peculiar to girls passing from childhood to youth usually replace the comely freshness and graceful, half-developed bloom of childhood, she had in no way altered.  Still the blue eyes with their merry glance were hers, the well-shaped nose with firm nostrils and almost forming a line with the forehead, the little mouth with its charming smile, the dimples in the rosy cheeks, and the small white hands.  To her, the epithet of “girl,” pure and simple, was pre-eminently applicable, for in her the only new features were a new and “young-lady-like” arrangement of her thick flaxen hair and a youthful bosom—­the latter an addition which at once caused her great joy and made her very bashful.