Page:Czechoslovak stories.pdf/167

 it happened that a wife would come to the inn for her husband, Jacob always congratulated himself that there was no one to come looking for him. It never bothered him that they poked fun at him, saying he’d be an old bachelor and that old bachelors must, after death, stay in purgatory and tie sand into bundles. Thus passed his fortieth year. Then someone told him that should he die childless he could not get to heaven, that children are steps up to heaven. Somehow that worked itself into Jacob’s brain and when the thought had thoroughly matured he went to the town mayor and married his maid, Bára.

Bára was a pretty girl in her youthful years. The boys liked to dance with her, and several of them used to go a-wooing her, but they were none of them the marrying sort. When Jacob asked her to become his wife she figured that she had three decades behind her, and though she was not particularly in love with Jacob she gave her promise to him, thinking to herself, “Better one’s own sheaf than someone else’s stack.” So they were married and the mayor prepared a fine wedding for them.

A year later a girl child was born to them whom they named Bára after her mother. Jacob scratched his head a little when they told him it was a girl and not a boy, but the midwife consoled him by telling him she resembled him as closely as one egg resembles another.

Some days after the birth of the girl a mishap oc-