Page:The grandmother; a story of country life in Bohemia.pdf/172

166 house. She shuts up the cats, puts out the last spark in the stove, and recollecting that there has been fire in the bake-oven outside, and that a spark may have remained there, decides that she had better go out and see.

Sultan and Tyrol sit on the foot-bridge. When they see Grandmother they look up surprised, for she is not accustomed to be out at that hour; but as soon as she pats them on their heads, they begin to rub themselves against her. "I suppose you've been watching for mice, you watermen? This you may do; but don't you meddle with my poultry!" She goes up the hill to the oven, the dogs following close behind her. She opens the oven, pokes among the ashes, but seeing not a single spark shuts it again, and returns homeward. By the foot-bridge is a large oak, whose branches make a convenient roost for some poultry. Grandmother looks up into the branches, hears gentle sighs, low twittering, and peeping. “They are dreaming of something," she says and goes further. What has delayed her by the garden? Does she hear the pleasant warbling of two nightingales in the garden shrubbery, or Victorka's sorrowful and broken melody that resounds from the dam? Or has she turned her eyes to the hill where multitudes of fire-flies are shining like so many twinkling stars? Below the hill over the meadow are hovering clouds like waves of gossamer. The people say they are not clouds, and perhaps she, too, believes that in those transparent silvery gray veils are enrobed the forest women, and is now watching their wild dance by the light of the moon. No, neither this nor that; she is look-