Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/190

 The second day was a repetition of the first and all Vojtech’s questions were futile. Pani Horska was silent, when Vojtech looked to her for explanation.

Vojtech was uneasy, indeed almost irritated by this event. It seemed to him as though he had a right to feel affronted and then again as though he had affronted the Horskas. The third day Lidunka failed to appear at all and there was nothing for it but to ask Pani Horska the reason.

“A foolish girl!” answered Pani Horska coldly. “I meant to ask you not to prolong her hour, because a teacher of the pianoforte comes after you and is obliged to wait. I did not wish to have said it to you. Do not wait any longer to-day.”

Vojtech thought that he went quietly out of the room. But at the door he remembered that he had not his hat in his hand and returned for it. His thoughts fluttered like scared and frightened birds which know not where they may alight. He felt all at once as though he had nothing to think about, nothing to occupy him, or again as though he could not unravel the tangled skein of destiny.

He awaited the morrow with unspeakable disquietude. It was plain that he must once more add to the little children’s lesson the time he had hitherto robbed them of for Lidunka’s benefit. That time seemed to him interminable, and though the children once again read through a whole fairy story and Vojtech must have been very much astonished at the rate they read the hour was not yet at an end and they began a second fairy story. How would Lidunka present herself that morning?

She was sorrowful when she came, and Vojtech was so disgusted with the pianoforte master who was the cause of this sorrow that he could have drowned him in a spoonful of water. He made various malicious sallies against pianoforte masters in general, and to his surprise Lidunka smiled and hastily confessed that she very much disliked learning the piano.

“What is there peculiar in that?” she asked. “They will never make of me an accomplished artist and every one learns to strum a little.”

Vojtech was well pleased to find that he had an ally in his prejudice against pianoforte masters. And Lidunka yet further confessed to him that the particular master provoked her.

To-day they curtailed the hour as though they had cut it with a pair of scissors. Even the second and third day it was the same and Vojtech was again fain to hope that the storm had blown over.