Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/184

 value and the sense of bitterness in all his perceptions was swept away as if at the touch of an unseen hand.

In the meantime the vacations drew near during which the children also got a holiday.

If Vojtech felt apprehensive at the beginning of each month lest his salary should be accompanied with dismissal, he felt so now to a far higher degree. He imagined himself so sure to be dismissed that he even sought to arm himself beforehand by a kind of cold determination, to hear the sentence from the lips of Pani Horska.

Pani Horska shook hands with him and said: “Pan Vojtech, your instruction of Lidunka does not satisfy me.”

Vojtech clutched a small table and, in spite of his determination, he felt as though the room spun round.

“I have thought about it in every way”, continued Pani Horska. “I must beg you now that Lidunka is growing a big girl to give her a few more hours every week.”

Vojtech’s head ceased to spin round. He rejoiced in heart.

After the holidays, then, Vojtech began to be occupied more frequently with Lidunka. Pani Horska confessed she was right to speak of the unsatisfactoriness of the lessons. He took the remark seriously to heart. He thought out a complete scheme during the holidays, noting down Lidunka’s weak points and where she needed pressingly to be corrected. He had hitherto taught Lidunka with pleasure, but now it seemed to him as though duty called him to apply all diligence toward the complete cultivation of the girl. It was as though in this lay a portion of the routine of his life.

Vojtech applied himself to this new duty with all the anxious care of a highly accomplished thinker. For the present this important matter filled his whole mind, so that he rested with all his thoughts intent upon it. It seemed to him as if after long rambling among wooded mountains he had reached at last a rich and beautiful region. A river bubbled, brambles stretched along its banks, birds flew out of their nests and pecked raspberries, the greensward smelt sweet, the trees stood wrapt in silent thoughts; the light filtered through a network of branches, the braes crept aloft to the heights, ferns down in the valley unfurled their broad fronds, and on the trunk of an uprooted tree sat he and felt it all. He little recked what awaited him after these pleasant scenes. Here it pleased him to abide and who knew whether