Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/291

 Now a pause occurred, and Loyka waited for a reply. But no reply came; Joseph did not stir, Barushka looked at her father, then at Joseph, and the rest of the company looked at one another. Loyka again took up the thread of his discourse. “If you are not contented with the conditions I have proposed, good. I and my wife, look you here, have the right to manage the estate for six more years, and only when those years are over need we discuss the question of your marriage. If, then, we are willing to grant the farm and house to you young people now at once, reserving to ourselves the management for the six years, we do this for the sake of you young people, because we know how you love one another, and that you are already all in all to one another.”

Now Joseph rose to reply, and the answer was at the tip of his tongue. “What you settle, dear parent, must be held binding. How, then, could we venture to prescribe to you how long you are to be hospodar? Be hospodar as long as you like. Grant that the farm be adjudged to us, permit us to espouse one another, and all the rest will arrange itself in the fear of God.”

Then Barushka rose, went to Loyka’s wife, embraced her round the neck, kissed her hand, and said, “Pani mamma, if you should wish to manage the household until the day of your death, I will bear you on my arm, and will love you above everything. Only let me be Joseph’s wife and your daughter. I desire nothing more.”

These words tripped quite glibly from Barushka’s tongue, and no doubt came from her heart, and yet she spoke them with a kind of forced energy as though she was anxious that they should not miss their mark. Loyka’s aged wife pressed her to her own bosom and embraced her. Loyka wiped away his tears, and at the same instant the neighbours wiped both their eyes and noses, because in all public assemblages tears take this direct route to the ground.

“Oh! what a daughter that is,” said the neighbours’ wives to her father Kmoch, “how well she expresses herself, too; you must love her, indeed, you must. And how proud you must be to have such a daughter.”

“How could I fail to feel delight in her”, said Kmoch. “She takes after me: that is just as I should have spoken.”

Then Barushka also stepped up to Loyka, kissed his hand, and repeated in somewhat different words all that she had said a moment before to her future mother-in-law. Here again during