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 exclamations, again wonderment. She finished. A small pause.

“The poor councilloress!” now sighed the burgomistress, “I wonder with what sly pretext he deceived her?”

“The councilloress is a little off,” the commissary’s wife moved the fingers of her right hand about her forehead, “that’s what I mean.”

“And that father of hers,—Kavka has reported to me early this morning about him,” explained the burgomistress (Kavka, the town watchman, was in the habit of calling early in the morning at the burgomaster’s kitchen, and the burgomistress would listen at breakfast to his report, when any one had gone home in the night, in what condition, from what inn, and so forth), “went at seven o’clock to their house, and returned again in a few minutes. Kavka, I tell you, is a shrewd fellow. He started a conversation with him, and that old man began to praise his daughter, the old lady, Jiří, and our