Page:Our Grandfather by Vítězslav Hálek (1887).pdf/56

 his parents were growing old and could not manage the household much longer.

“And why not then?” said Uncle John, as if in good humour, “then I shall have obeyed you in everything.”

Grandfather was quite accustomed to his biting sentences, and already sometimes failed to feel their incisiveness. But here, at any rate, he had at last managed to know what he wished to know. He thought, then, that he must be contented with the reply.

And in reality the business began to make satisfactory progress, and before anyone expected it a letter came to the house. Uncle John was, moreover, so resigned to grandfather’s wishes, that grandfather must have been delighted with him.

Whether Uncle John read this letter I do not know, but certain it is that when grandfather told him he must write a reply, Uncle John told him he had an answer all prepared.

And the messenger took a letter from him to his intended bride, only that it was the same which he had brought from her to him.

Grandfather must have had satisfaction in seeing how everything succeeded—and he had it.

When after several days, the evenings began to close in, a wedding was already openly mentioned, the servants continually agitated the matter, and after some days even the poultry at Kubista’s talked it over.

Old Kubista’s head spun round.

Now even Novak began to present himself openly at the farm, and when Uncle John greeted him affably enough it followed that the last stumbling block was quite removed.