Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com vain. He knew how to make even his mother give way to
him; he was almost despotic in his control of her. She gave
way to him, oh, she had given way to him for years. The one
thought unendurable to her was that her boy had no great
love for her. She was always fancying that Kolya was ‘unfeel-
ing’ to her, and at times, dissolving into hysterical tears, she
used to reproach him with his coldness. The boy disliked
this, and the more demonstrations of feeling were demand-
ed of him, the more he seemed intentionally to avoid them.
Yet it was not intentional on his part but instinctive — it
was his character. His mother was mistaken; he was very
fond of her. He only disliked ‘sheepish sentimentality,’ as he
expressed it in his schoolboy language.
There was a bookcase in the house containing a few
books that had been his father’s. Kolya was fond of read-
ing, and had read several of them by himself. His mother
did not mind that and only wondered sometimes at seeing
the boy stand for hours by the bookcase poring over a book
instead of going to play. And in that way Kolya read some
things unsuitable for his age.
Though the boy, as a rule, knew where to draw the line in
his mischief, he had of late begun to play pranks that caused
his mother serious alarm. It is true there was nothing vi-
cious in what he did, but a wild mad recklessness.
It happened that July, during the summer holidays, that
the mother and son went to another district, forty-five miles
away, to spend a week with a distant relation, whose hus-
band was an official at the railway station (the very station,
the nearest one to our town, from which a month later Ivan