Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/278

 dug, Staza shovelled out the loose earth, and Frank was a silent spectator. Bartos from time to time sang over some popular song which was in keeping with his trade, Staza’s little voice accompanied him like a fiddle-string, and Frank formed the audience.

Bartos also occasionally muttered a few sentences which apparently had reference to the defunct, but which neither of the children at all understood; perhaps Bartos purposely spoke in such a way that Frank should not understand him, and should not have his sorrow awakened.

All at once Staza said, “Franky, when the grave is delved, we will lie in it together.”

At these words Frank recoiled several steps. Staza laughed, and Bartos remained pensive. Frank recoiled like a machine without volition; Staza laughed at this, and Bartos, after a moment’s pause, said, “We are digging close to your mother’s grave, we must take care not to come upon her coffin, it has only been in the ground six years.”

“Delve so that I may come quite close to maminka, then I shall sleep with her”, said Staza, as if she consoled herself with the idea, for any one who had looked for melancholy from this poor child, would have proven himself completely ignorant of the heart of childhood. Staza was but three years of age when her mother died; in such a little heart sorrow cannot obtain a foothold, and after six years a child does not know what it means to have lost a mother.

After these words Frank drew near the grave on the pretence that he wanted to see whether Bartos and Staza would delve so cleverly as not to disturb the neighbouring grave.

“Thou hast never yet slept in a grave, Franky”, said Staza not at all interrogatively, but just as though she were stating a certainty.

“In a grave?” inquired Frank in astonishment. Staza grew on graves as the grass and the floweret grew upon them. This cemetery was her playing-ground, her village green where she frolicked, where she delved and watered the plants and tended them; it was her school where with Bartos and on those graves she learnt little of literary lore, ’tis true, but more than all the patter of the class-room.

When she was yet quite young she had once asked Bartos, “What is my mamma doing in the grave?”

“She sleeps”, said Bartos.