head propped on his two hands; he, too, was looking away into the
distance. He was three years older than his companion, but seemed
much younger. His moustache was only just growing, and his chin was
covered with a light curly down. There was something childishly
pretty, something attractively delicate, in the small features of his
fresh round face, in his soft brown eyes, lovely pouting lips, and
little white hands. Everything about him was suggestive of the happy
light-heartedness of perfect health and youth--the carelessness,
conceit, self-indulgence, and charm of youth. He used his eyes, and
smiled and leaned his head as boys do who know that people look at
them admiringly. He wore a loose white coat, made like a blouse, a
blue kerchief wrapped his slender throat, and a battered straw hat had
been flung on the grass beside him.

His companion seemed elderly in comparison with him; and no one would
have supposed, from his angular figure, that he too was happy and
enjoying himself. He lay in an awkward attitude; his large head--wide
at the crown and narrower at the base--hung awkwardly on his long neck;
awkwardness was expressed in the very pose of his hands, of his
body, tightly clothed in a short black coat, and of his long legs with
their knees raised, like the hind-legs of a grasshopper. For all that,
it was impossible not to recognise that he was a man of good education;
the whole of his clumsy person bore the stamp of good-breeding; and
his face, plain and even a little ridiculous as it was, showed a
kindly nature and a thoughtful habit. His name was Andrei Petrovitch
Bersenyev; his companion, the fair-haired young man, was called Pavel
Yakovlitch Shubin.

'Why don't you lie on your face, like me?' began Shubin. 'It's ever so
much nicer so; especially when you kick up your heels and clap them