Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/79

 of fresh butter, and spread a cloth over the top.

When she was just on the point of starting, some one came running full tilt towards the door of the cottage. Martinka stopped short; she thought this might mean a police raid. But by the dim light of the rush-candle she recognized—Vendulka Paloucky.

At this hour of the night Martinka would sooner have expected to see a ghost than her niece, and at the first moment she was speechless with astonishment and apprehension. Without bidding her aunt good-even, Vendulka dropped on to a seat near the door, and groaned as if she were in agonies.

‘Thank God a thousand times that you had not yet started,’ she stammered at last.

‘But for the Lord’s sake, what are you here for at this hour of night?’ asked Martinka, when she had regained her composure; ‘your face is on fire, and you have no breath left. I suppose Lukas’s baby is ill, and you want me to get you medicine from Zittau through the smugglers. Be quick and out with it! I’m in a hurry, I ought to have been on my way by now. I don’t know what Matousš will think; he will say I am no better than the other women.’