Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/198

 When they came to the meadow to-day, there actually was a little bird caught in the cage; it was a little golden-crested wren, a bird not easily caught. This one blinked with its little eyes as though it begged for liberty. Vojtech withdrew the gold-crest from the cage and put it into the little boy’s hand. The boy all his life had never had a bird in his hand and was almost startled by the softness of its feathers, it was a wonder he did not let it go. But when the gold-crest began to peck at his own small fingers and to eye him wistfully, the little boy was quite beside himself with delight.

When he had looked his fill, Vojtech took the bird and set it at liberty. The gold-crest hopped from bough to bough, and the little boy’s eyes quite glistened as he watched it grow smaller and smaller in the distance.

Lidunka again received them at the house and her little brother told her shortly that now he would never go out walking with any one but Pan Vojtech.

So Vojtech took the little boy out walking almost every day and of it all that had any value in his mind was that he had seen Lidunka two or three times oftener than his wont.

She it was who regularly handed over to him her brother and received him again. Vojtech diversified their walks. Sometimes he and the little boy sat together and Vojtech gave him a lesson in telling tales. And the little fellow had to tell him everything he could about Lidunka. When he came to a standstill, Vojtech put a fresh question to him and the little boy continued his narrative. In this way, without knowing it, the boy raised a curtain which had hitherto veiled Lidunka from Vojtech and Vojtech learned more about her in one afternoon than he had done during the whole of his engagement at the Horskas’s. Vojtech praised the child for telling his tale so prettily, and the boy on his side was proud to think that he would have more to narrate next day. Vojtech knew when Lidunka went to bed, when she got up. How brother and sister dressed, how she employed her time, what she talked about, what she liked—and in general everything which a little boy could tell of his sister.

Once it rained, there was no prospect of a walk, and so for that day Vojtech put off his hour until the evening.

From the kitchen at the Horskas’s you entered a room and by this you passed to a second in which Vojtech generally taught. In the first room the Horskas received their visitors; it was the very same room through which Lidunka long ago used to come