Page:Czechoslovak stories.pdf/175

 boundary ridge the better to view the horizon spread out before her eyes.

Jacob often said to her, “I don’t understand, girl, what joy you can have to look into the heavens when God is angry.”

“Just the same sort of joy I have as when he smiles,” she answered. “Just see, father, that fire-how beautiful it is amid the black clouds!”

“Don’t point!” shrieked Jacob warningly. “God’s messenger will break off your finger! He who does not fear the tempest has no fear of the Lord, don’t you know that?”

“Elška of the parsonage once read me out of a book that we must not fear a storm as if it were the wrath of God, but that we should admire in it His divine power. The priest always preaches that God is only good and is love wholly. How could it be that He is so often angry at us? I love God and so I’m not afraid of His messenger.”

Jacob disliked long speeches and so he left Bára to her own thinking. The neighbors, however, seeing the girl’s fearlessness and that nothing evil occurred to her, were all the more convinced that she was a child protected by some supernatural power.

Besides her father, Elška and Josífek, who were of her own age, were the only ones who loved her. Josífek was the son of the sexton, Elška was the niece of the parish priest. Josífek was a lad of slender build, pale, golden-haired, good-hearted, but very timid.