Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - On the bright shore.djvu/119

 him an old man whose face had grown small and wrinkled; his moustaches and hair were white as milk; his blue eyes opened widely, and looked something like the eyes of an infant.

"Grandfather," said Maria, bending over him in such fashion that the old man could see her lips, and speaking not in a loud voice, but slowly and precisely, "this is Pan Svirski, a fellow-countryman and an artist."

The old man turned his blue eyes toward the visitor, and looked at him persistently, meanwhile blinking as if summoning his mind.

"A fellow-countryman?" repeated he. "Yes!—a fellow-countryman."

Then he smiled, looked at his daughter, his granddaughter, and again at Svirski; he sought words for a time, and asked at last, with an aged, trembling voice,—

"And what will there be in spring?"

Evidently there remained to him some single thought, which had outlived all the others, but which he had not been able to