Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/127

 And so also in every woman whom we observed in the distance, we saw grandmother approaching even with the plates, even with her pockets full of goodies. Although she was a quarter of an hour from us we saw to a hair everything, down to the least detail, just as if she was already present with us. She smiled at us, smoothed her grey locks and just as she comes near to us takes us each by one hand and tells us what perhaps father did not the least know when we asked him. But what was our astonishment when, in place of grandmother’s tranquil face, we saw another—cold and wholly unknown to us. No! Such a one we could never love, not if she had all her pockets full, and two plates in each hand.

And now father had to explain to us how it was that he failed to discern at a distance that it was not our grandmother, while we discovered it the instant she had come the least bit nearer to us, and yet we did not know half of what father knew. Then he began to excuse himself and to say that he had made a mistake; but that yonder, see, it really was she who was just coming on the hill-top. Children are easily contented as soon as their mind finds some new object of interest. And thus even we ourselves discovered once more with all the force of youthful imagination grandmother’s tranquil face in the person who was approaching us.

But when even this person proved to be quite a stranger to us, father began to excuse himself, saying that no doubt her plates had fallen out of her hands in the village, and so she had had to return to the house, and that no doubt we should see her as soon as we came into the village.

And certainly we did see her. Not, indeed, as we pictured her coming to meet us, but at home in the living-room, about the oven.

The first greeting put all questions out of our heads, and it was only after a few minutes that we asked her why she did not come to meet us before and she told us that she was on the point of setting out to look for us when we entered the hall. But she placed cakes and ripe cherries on the table for us without delay, and we reconnoitred her pockets, in which there was always something ready stowed away for us.

While we were at our meal she took into her hands a plate from the range, and wiping it with her apron, kept continually balancing on tiptoe, just as if she was going to dance. This sort of dancing made her appear almost a young woman, and you