Page:Poet Lore, volume 21, 1910.djvu/430

 Kocianova.—No. Soon after dinner he took a book and went somewhere around ZalachiZalchi [sic].

Matoush.—My old feet don’t serve me as well as they used to. I went around to Zablati and it took me a good hour to get home. And I am tired. In other days I would go with the last sacrament a good many miles and would come home as fresh as when I started, but now even such a short walk wearies me. We are getting old, Marianka; we are getting old. And we stand here all alone.

Kocianova.—May the Almighty at least reward us with Petr. May He give him His mercy and blessing so he can serve his first mass next year.

Matoush (smiling).—And afterwards that he should go a-farming on some godforsaken country parsonage. Is that it? (Sits down on the bench.)

Kocianova.—God’s will be done. Our old father farmed, my old man farmed,—and both were content.

Matoush.—Listen Marianka—come, stop a moment—come sit down here beside me. Listen, are you not at least once in a while a bit sorry that Petr is not going to be something greater, something more important than his uncle? And you know well that he could have been.

Kocianova.—But I have promised him to the Lord. And He knows the covenant I made with Him when the boy was on his deathbed, and that’s why He saved him.

Matoush.—And do you think that is the only reason why He saved him?

Kocianova.—For that and everything. But it was His will that Petr should be what you are.

Matoush.—What I am! Ah! my golden soul, at our age one can regret many things and yearn for things which are not. I go through fields, I meet the peasants and laborers, and I often ask of myself, “For this did I study many long years, for this did my brothers and sisters sacrifice themselves, for this did I remain single, that at the end of ends I should be the same as you are, but without your happiness and your hope?” What I am! A peasant, a strange acre, which to-day is mine and to-morrow is—God knows whose. A decaying recluse who never knew the world and who doesn’t leave anything to the world.

Kocianova.—Don’t lament, Jenichek! You brought up Petr.

Matoush.—No, I didn’t. He would have finished his studies