Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/259

 help us in God’s name.’ Loyka perceived that I was smiling and said, ‘Lazy body! lie no longer, up! up! and work thou also!’ Then he rose and set himself to cut the corn, I meanwhile sat beside him near the boundary-stone, and waited till he had once more finished cutting his own small portion. When he had finished it, he again lay down.”

“And why could not his son, the present proprietor, cut it for him?” inquired some, though, indeed, they knew why this was not done, because they had already asked the same question several times at least, both in the present and the past.

“He could and he could not,” answered the mayor again, “of course you understand―he was a pensioner of the son’s bounty. ’Tis seldom a son gives the father anything who is once pensioned off.”

As soon as this sentence was pronounced it was again evident that Vena was present. He stood by the farmstead, considering what to do with the rosolek, now that no one was willing to drink it. But as soon as he heard about the son and the pensioner on his bounty, he seemed all at once to be beside himself. “A murrain upon you every morning, ye peasant proprietors, who do not know what to do with your father when he is pensioned off. Only let me have power in my hands for half a day, I would drive you round the circle, I can tell you! Every one of you should be pensioned off at once for two years at least. A son cannot have a korets of land reaped for his father, because the father is pensioned off; blast all such sons, say I.”

“’Tis a poor fool, and yet he hath right on his side,” said some of his neighbours, “but he is touched here.” Others again said, “How, then, dare you say this, Vena, are you not a dependent on Loyka’s farm?” To this Vena replied very indignantly, “If I am on Loyka’s farm, I work for myself, I have no need of any one to work for me. Also I speak for myself, I have no need that any one should speak for me.”

Here the mayor again interposed: “Well! well! old people are sometimes rather laughable; in their time everything was quite different, you know. While Loyka lay on the rye which he had cut, he said: ‘Nowadays, my good gossip, there are not such winters as they used to be. In my young day, the sparrows fell from the eaves and partridges and hares were frozen like clods of earth. More than once we thought it was the cat serattling at the door, and lo! it was a hare. Did you ever hear the like of that?’ On this I say to him, ‘Oh! grandfather, one summer you