Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/200

176 and have kept it up to this very day. You could go about even without trousers, if you wished, but we old Montenegrins do not consider what is most pleasant, but what is more becoming. Melt? As if I were made of sugar! What braggarts the youth of to-day are, and how feeble they have grown"

The little fellow flushed as if glowing coals had been scattered over him. His comrades looked at him with reproachful glances. But the one with the big moustache exclaimed soothingly:

"Do not chide him, serdar, it is no great matter. He did not mean to affront you. Go, Lale, ask pardon of your cousin!"

Lale kissed Jovan's hand. The latter gave a kindly smile and fondled his head. This was his answer; he was gracious in a trice,—a true "old Montenegrin."

The serdar had not a big family. Besides his wife he had only a grandson named Ivan, and a daughter, Dunja. She was a girl as sturdy as her father, but she was taller than he. She had great dark eyes and splendid long hair. The lads often crept secretly into the serdar's courtyard, to watch the girl as she was combing her hair. The plaits came down below her waist. And when she ran barefoot in her chemise across the courtyard, the ground fairly shook beneath her tread. Little Ivan was scarcely two months old when his father fell in battle at the time of