waiting for anyone else. His whole countenance suddenly changed. The solemn and tragic expression with which he had entered vanished completely, and a look of something childlike came into his face. He seemed to have become suddenly gentle and subdued. He looked shyly and happily at everyone, with a continual nervous little laugh, and the blissful expression of a dog who has done wrong, been punished, and forgiven. He seemed to have forgotten everything, and was looking round at everyone with a childlike smile of delight. He looked at Grushenka, laughing continually, and bringing his chair close up to her. By degrees he had gained some idea of the two Poles, though he had formed no definite conception of them yet.
The Pole on the sofa struck him by his dignified demeanor and his Polish accent; and, above all, by his pipe. > “Well, what of it? It’s a good thing he’s smoking a pipe,” he reflected. The Pole’s puffy, middle-aged face, with its tiny nose and two very thin, pointed, dyed and impudent-looking mustaches, had not so far roused the faintest doubts in Mitya. He was not even particularly struck by the Pole’s absurd wig made in Siberia, with love-locks foolishly combed forward over the temples. > “I suppose it’s all right since he wears a wig,” he went on, musing blissfully. The other, younger Pole, who was staring insolently and defiantly at the company and listening to the conversation with silent contempt, still only impressed Mitya by his great height, which was in striking contrast to the Pole on the sofa. > “If he stood up he’d be six foot three.” The thought flitted through Mitya’s mind. It occurred