Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/193

 kreuzer!” This time Voytech did not go with hasty steps. He had time and to spare. He threw them a kreuzer, he was much amused. He remained standing among them and when the kreuzer was carried off in triumph, he threw them another. He laughed yet more, and Vojtech applied his hand to his pocket, until he had no more kreuzers left.

When he had come to the end of them all, he turned away. The children shouted after him, “Where are you going?”

He asked himself the question, “Where am I going?” and he did not know.

Then he knew that he was sitting at the hostinets and that it was a gala day with him.

The mother in reality did take Lidunka out walking in the evening. Either because long walks always have this effect or because the air of spring overpowered their strength, they came home thoroughly tired out, and Lidunka at once sought her bed. Even talking wearied her, she answered shortly, asked no questions herself and lay muffled upon her bed as though that was the only place where she felt at home. She could not expect to sleep, think some of my girlish readers. But her mother observed with apprehension that she continually turned from side to side; also that her forehead was hot to the touch, and sometimes it seemed as though her daughter murmured something in her sleep.

Once they returned home rather late not from a walk but after paying a visit.

Lidunka hesitated to lie down.

She looked at her mother and by a kind of silent glance gave her to understand that she wanted to say something.

The very words seemed to beat time in her bosom. So in clocks, before they strike, we hear a stronger ticking.

When her mother turned away from her, Lidunka waited till she turned towards her again, and when her mother turned towards her she thought that she was just about to speak, when her mother turned away again. Her mother, as it were, felt the ticking and did not venture to be the first to break silence.

The mother had already laid herself down to rest. Lidunka still hesitated.

“Why don’t you lie down, Lidunka?” asked her mother.

Lidunka’s embarrassment increased.

She went and knelt quietly beside her mother’s bed, took her mother by the hand and kissing it all over said, “I must say good night.”