Page:Poet Lore, volume 28, 1917.djvu/530



Brouzda.—Where is he hurrying? ( has gone. is gazing about the room.) One can see that you are fortunate. Everything looks as though you were celebrating one long holiday.

Tonicka.—You could live just as well if you would only try.

Brouzda.—You want to scold me all the time. Rather have a little pity on me. It’s easy for you to talk when good fortune smiles upon you. You have two children of your own, and yet you take a third to raise. That, I could not do.

Tonicka.—And no one is asking you to. Just worry a little more about the four mouths of your own that you have to feed. And the child of my sister is not a strange child here,—do you understand?

Brouzda.—But still, she isn’t yours! If the dead father of that little Bozenka could only see how carefully you are bringing her up, he surely would be overjoyed!

Tonicka (Sadly).—Poor fellow!

Brouzda.—Yes, poor fellow! I can almost see him now, just as he used to look! (While talking to her, he has eaten both of the loaves.)

Tonicka.—And to this day, I do not understand how he came to be killed while you were saved. You two were digging side by side.

Brouzda.—Side by side. Only in that instant, I went away with a wheelbarrow full of coal, and when it happened, I was only about fifty steps away from him, behind the big rock around the corner, close to the exit.

Tonicka.—He should not have gone to work that day. He had received plenty of warning, and still he went.

Brouzda.—What kind of warning, I pray you?

Tonicka.—From that miner’s phantom.

Brouzda (Smiling).—That phantom? Nothing but a fairytale. I wonder that anyone would believe in that nonsense!

Tonicka (Spiritedly).—Look here, Brouzda, what is the use of mocking and calling down unnecessary evil upon yourself? I know what happened,—there is no mistake about it! Why, didn’t he come home from the mine just the night before, frightened out of his senses! He was always dauntless as a lion,