Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/157

 He said that Uncle John dissipated his energies by reflections which afflicted him, that his looks and thoughts fastened only on women, and that what the women altogether had so long failed to effect a single woman would effect if he could be brought acquainted with her.

Grandfather thought all this supremely wise, and wondered at himself for not thinking of it before, and as for Novak, faith he was a man more sensible than a Doctor of Law.

Novak, however, reasoned according to his trade, and if he had been a butcher he would have recommended that uncle should eat plenty of meat. Had he been an innkeeper he would have recommended plenty of beer. Being a go-between in love-affairs, he recommended that uncle should wive.

And all at once he knew everything about a bride in prospect, and described her in such glowing colours that Horakoff’s daughter at Brizoff vanished before her, and was not fit to reach her water at table.

Grandfather thought that he had won “terns”, and he had no need to trouble himself further about anything; for Novak took upon himself all trouble and eased grandfather’s mind by promising that Uncle John should conform to everything.

After this grandfather himself took Uncle John in hand. After suitable circumlocutions, he asked him, as if casually, whether he yet thought of marriage, seeing that his parents were growing old and could not manage the household much longer.

“And why not then?” said Uncle John, as if in good humour, “then I shall have obeyed you in everything.”

Grandfather was quite accustomed to his biting sentences, and already sometimes failed to feel their incisiveness. But here, at any rate, he had at last managed to know what he wished to know. He thought, then, that he must be contented with the reply.

And in reality the business began to make satisfactory progress, and before any one expected it a letter came to the house. Uncle John was, moreover, so resigned to grandfather’s wishes, that grandfather must have been delighted with him.

Whether Uncle John read this letter I do not know, but certain it is that when grandfather told him he must write a reply, Uncle John told him he had an answer all prepared.

And the messenger took a letter from him to his intended bride, only that it was the same which he had brought from her to him.

Grandfather must have had satisfaction in seeing how everything succeeded—and he had it.