Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/244

 Quay, and hereupon, like a doctor, he went his rounds, visited all his patients, felt himself a new man, and was at peace.

We have already said that Poldik only practised his horse-doctoring when he felt inclined. But now this inclination continued unchecked, and, consequently, he had almost become a real professional. By the end of the year, or at most two summers, he had amassed a considerable sum of money, so that no scavenger in the town could compare with him. Poldik, had he been a scavenger all his life, would never have attained so independent a position.

Then when his affairs began to succeed beyond his fondest expectation, they began also to be a burden to him; wherever he looked he saw the divine benediction; but with it all to be alone in the world was a grievous trial to him.

Here, no doubt, the inexperienced reader will be inclined to exclaim, “Ah, ha! the writer is trying to find a new bride for him.”

He is not doing so, my dear reader-all thoughts of wedlock Poldik had now banished from his mind for ever. He would rather have stabbed himself with the first knife which came to his hand than have said again to any female, “When shall we two pair off?” From that side he was as completely cured as those horses of his which he possessed no longer; and if a new saint had been required for the calendar, whose sole qualification was to be that he now never even looked at a woman’s form—Poldik might have applied for the place and have been canonized forthwith.

But a new and somewhat curious idea took possession of him, in consequence of which he ceased to feel lonely and deserted. This same idea was to beg from their parents the boys and children of scavengers. When he knew that a scavenger had a son who already began to trot along beside the horses, Poldik went to the father and said, “What do you mean your son to be?”

If the scavenger said, “What should I mean him to be? He will be a scavenger.” “Good,” said Poldik, “but you might entrust him to me for a time in order that he may learn to understand horses.”

And he got the boy, for what scavenger would have refused to have his son taught such an excellent science as was Poldik’s science. And as soon as Poldik got him, he said to himself. “Won!”

And to be sure, he sedulously developed in every boy a knowledge of horses and the proper treatment of them. But none the less, and perhaps mainly, he developed a disgust of scavenging and