Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/288

 Before the funeral procession issued forth from the door, Loyka’s wife had already arranged her kitchen; fat beasts slaughtered the day before were already in chops and quarters on the truncheons or were frying on the hobs. Then Loyka’s wife followed the corpse, in order to cry her prescribed modicum of tears to cry a good bottleful, and it was just as necessary and just as much belonged to her sphere as the sauces and the Sauerkraut.

After the funeral, then Loyka’s house wore all the appearance of a festival. The guests who were staying in the house and those who were invited for the day sat down to a richly furnished table, which in the form of a horseshoe occupied the whole of the principal apartment; the musicians seated themselves in the hall by the pantry, and after a few moments everything was as merry as at a wedding.

It was a custom in the Loykas’s family for the males to marry late in life. Thus our defunct centenarian had not married until wellnigh his fortieth year: Loyka, the peasant proprietor, not until after his thirtieth year, consequently he was now sixty and his wife fifty. Joseph, his eldest son, was now about four-and-twenty—we know the age of Frank. Loyka, the peasant, in contra-distinction to the vejminkar [pensioner] was called young Loyka. But after the death of the hundred-year-old grandfather, Loyka, the peasant, became all at once old Loyka, and his son Joseph was promoted to the dignity of young Loyka.

Joseph seemed fully alive to the importance of the day. He did not seat himself at the table, but with watchful eyes superintended and arranged the dishes and liquors as they issued from the kitchen and the cellar, and in the dining-room he attended to the wants of all.

This did not escape the observation of those present, and as soon as conversation became general some of the neighbours turned to Loyka, and remarked, “Your son makes an excellent hospodar.”

“Ay, ay, and doubtless his kind father will not leave him long to wait and why should you grudge yourself repose when you have so stout and goodly a successor.”

Loyka, the peasant proprietor, smiled self-consciously to himself at these words, as though he meant to say by that smile:—“Just wait a little, and you will soon hear what I have determined in my mind.”