Page:Czechoslovak stories.pdf/271

 from them. Even my very name, Halama, which isn’t very pretty, I honor. My great-grandfather received that name from the German overlords because he was indomitable and refused to kiss the lash with which they beat him. And that name given by the nobility to insult him has become my pride. None of my sons is ashamed of his father, even if he is only a Halama—”

“Eh, those are only speeches.” Nešněra waved his hand vexedly, drowning his discomfiture in a glass.

“Speeches they are, but not empty ones! No evasions, you understand?” Halama would not permit himself to be interrupted once having gotten into the current. “And it is true that you can do as you please with your own property. You’re not sinning against any legal ordinance nor can anyone send you to court for it. But you are committing a sin against your own people on the land of your fathers. What would become of us if everyone renounced his land as easily as you have done? You get rid of it in order to gain a few dollars, another to avoid some misfortune—”

“And soon the Germans would buy up in that way our very mountains beneath our feet,” echoed in warm assent Vavřík, one of the young men. “I felt at once that Joseph wasn’t doing the right thing. And what’s worst of all about it, he’s selling the ground for a German school! What do we need of it here?”