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 “Oh, she’s a hard one. She stings everyone with her basilisk eye, not only me. Perhaps she dislikes me because I am in better standing with your people than is Josífek and because Josífek likes me. The poor fellow gets a beating every time his mother learns that he has been to see me. I always tell him not to come here, but he comes anyway, and I am not to blame.”

Elška was silent, but after a pause asked, “And do you like Josífek?”

“Why shouldn’t I like him? Everybody picks on him just as they do on me. Poor little fellow! He can’t defend himself and I feel sorry for him.”

“Why, is he still the same as he used to be? Mrs. Vlček told me he had grown remarkably.”

“Yes, as high as Lišaj’s garters,” smiled Bára. But at once she added compassionately, “How can he grow when his mother gives him more thumps on the back than she puts biscuits in his stomach?”

“And what does Vlček say to all that? It’s his son, too!”

“Vlček and Mrs. Vlček are of one stripe. They are angry because Josífek does not want to become a priest. In the name of the Lord, how can he help it that he doesn’t like it any more? Unwilling service surely could not be pleasing to God.”

“Truly, it could not be,” Elška confirmed.

A little while longer the girls talked, and then Bára accompanied Elška home. From that time they visited