Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/375

 it her fault?’ said your little Staza. ‘We do not drive away an animal when it nestles against us; in what is Annette worse than an animal?’ And as you know, pantata, she took her as nurse to your pretty grandchild.”

“Just so, just so”, smiled old Loyka.

But the whole farm was quite on foot when there for a time came on a visit the grave-digger Bartos. “I begin to be aweary among the dead,” said he, “and since the living like me, I gladly come a while among them. Well, and you like to have me with you?”

And it was a wonder they did not carry him on their shoulders, that is to say, if they could have born his weight. And as they could not do this, they hung upon him. Frank and Staza and the little fellow which Staza took from Annette that she might proudly exhibit it.

“Why am I made so strong, I wonder,” Bartos would say, “if I may not fling you off.” And he prepared jestingly to drive them before him that he might free himself from them. But it was worst of all when he prepared to depart. Here even old Loyka fastened on him, and all held him, that he should still remain with them. And here Bartos, the grave-digger, for a time feigned to chevy them away, just as though he would shake them off. And we must say what then happened seldom happened—it being the only occasion when the Herculean Bartos succumbed. Frank, Staza, Loyka, and the little boy overpowered him, and sometimes the little boy alone prevailed.

“Well, well”, laughed old Loyka, and then when at even the musicians came there was in the farm a most charming idyll.

Long had they sought this idyll, long had they wandered in search of it, but they found it at last. And this idyll ends as it began:—

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