Page:The grandmother; a story of country life in Bohemia.pdf/256

250 experience how that is. My husband,—may God grant his soul eternal rest,—was obliged to get accustomed to worse than this, and I with him; but with us it was not as with Jacob and Christina. George got permission to marry and we lived together contented. In this case it may not be, and it is no wonder that he doesn't want to go, when we remember that they would be obliged to wait for each other for fourteen long years! But perhaps he will escape after all." At this moment her whole face brightened up, for she espied the children coming; they in turn, seeing her, started on the run to meet her.

"Well, Manchinka, are you not hungry?" asked the miller, when his daughter greeted him.

"Indeed, I am, Papa, and all of us are. Why, we haven't had any dinner to-day!"

"That large slice of bread, those dried apples and buns, that was dew?" asked the father as he turned round his snuff box.

"Oh, that was no dinner, that was only a lunch," laughed the girl.

"To walk such a distance and study besides makes one hungry, does it not?" asked Grandmother, and putting the spindle under her arm, she added: "Come let us hurry home lest you die of starvation!" They bade each other good-night. Manchinka told Barunka she would wait for them the next morning again, and hastened into the house. Barunka took her grandmother's hand. "Now tell me how you got along at school, what you studied, and how you behaved?"

"Just think, Grandma, I am bankaufser," said John, skipping before her.