Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/248

 but then again he said to himself, “What should I do with the little scamp? He will be like his father, he will never have heard of scavenging and care for nothing but the water. What is the profit of purifying his will from the taint of scavenging, when he has no will to be a scavenger?” And only because he had neither skill nor power to fit the thing into his own mental economy, he hesitated and did not go for the boy.

But once it was made known to him that Malka was ill, and that she did not know how her illness might end. Hereupon Poldik went directly to Malka and said, “Ah! Malka, give me this boy of yours: he will be very useful to me, and then you will be freed from all anxiety about him. The boy will be as though he was my own!”

On this Malka said, “I thank you, Poldik, for your kindly offer: but I will not give the boy to you.”

These words made on Poldik the impression as though he had fallen from the sky. So then, she still even now so despised him that she would not even trust her child to him, although she was sick and in distress.

It is possible that any one else would have snatched his hat and quitted her at once. Even Poldik thought of leaving her, but his heart took a considerable step higher, he mastered himself and said, “And what if I should still wish for the boy?” He thought to himself, is it possible that she does not trust him to my charge. On this, Malka said, “I, still, shall not give him to you.”

Then at last Poldik stretched out his hand for his hat, and was departing: only instead of good-bye, he said, “I did not think it of you.”

And here Malka looked at him almost with anguish and said, “Do not take it amiss, Poldik, dear. But you wish to make all your boys wherrymen.”

“Well, and what is the harm of that?” said Poldik, with a certain stubbornness which carried with it a touch of reproach to Malka.

“I do not wish to make a wherryman of him”, said Malka.

“Your boy has not to be a wherryman?” asked Poldik, and he felt as though he had come to the end of all his latinity. “What then is he to be?” he added.

“His father perished on the water: I cannot look any longer at the water without crying, I should be miserable every day if my child had to be on the water for the whole day.”