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 I know I should act unwisely,” she added, “if I judged all men by Baron Poc̓ernický; still for the time my heart is filled to overflowing with little Pepíc̓ek, and if there is any room in it beside him, it all belongs to you, my dear and reverend father, and to our dear Miss Naninka, who takes such motherly care of my child, which I shall never, never forget.”

“Now, that is what I call something!” said Naninka.

Father Cvok looked at her inquiringly.

“She has good luck with the men, indeed,” Naninka went on. “What you do not covet comes to you of itself. We shall be going, after all, to a wedding one of these days that we never even dreamt of.”

“I don’t think any rain will come from that cloud,” Heavens replied. “There is nothing in the letter about her favouring Mr. Doubek at all.”

“What’s not in the letter may be in her heart, and what’s not perhaps yet in her heart may be in it later.”

“You have come to speak like a book of late, Naninka, and are upsetting all my preconceived ideas of you!”

The housekeeper shrugged her shoulders, and indulged secretly in a pinch of snuff.

“If you please, read on, your reverence. What more does Miss Jenny say?”

Jenny wrote further that she had got Father Cvok’s letter through her aunt Knír̓ová, and thanked him for all his news of little Pepíc̓ek. She excused herself for not having written to him for so many weeks, by explaining that, having been so used to the almost police-like supervision of the baroness at Labutín, she was at first very anxious and careful at the Opolskýs’, lest any suspicion might arise against her, and she said she still felt like one who had done an ignoble thing in secret, and knew