Page:Czechoslovak stories.pdf/296

 “Not a day passes but what the peasant gives me food,” she said delightedly to Matýsek. “And I have shoes to wear to church. Since I’ve been on his estate I have provided myself with two heavy wool head shawls, one skirt and one coat. I don’t have to wear my linen jacket on Sundays if I don’t wish to.”

And Barka was in the tenth year of her service at the miserly peasant’s.

Sometimes people laughed about the attachment of the two and then again they asserted, also laughingly, to be sure, that the two just suited each other as if the pigeons had borne them. By which they meant that one was about as weak mentally as the other.

If anyone let drop a whisper of such an insinuation before Barka, she let it stand as far as it applied to herself, replying only with her customary, “Never mind!” But God forbid that anyone should so express himself about Matýsek. She was up in arms immediately.

“You just let Matýsek alone,” she shouted till she was fairly purple. “He has sense enough for himself and he doesn’t have to have it for others.”

Matýsek never so violently opposed anyone who had anything against Barka or himself, but it never was erased from his memory. If he had to pass near such a person, he dropped his eyes and would not have raised them if he had known that he’d be shot for it. Yes, Matýsek had his own head and knew how to set it and also how to punish people whom he had cause to dislike.