Page:The grandmother; a story of country life in Bohemia.pdf/302



HE Pentecost holidays were over; Grandmother called them green holidays, probably because everything both inside and outside the house was decorated with foliage; so that whether they sat at the table or slept on their beds, they were "under the green." Corpus Christi and St. John the Baptist's were also gone. The voice of the nightingale was heard no more in the thicket, the swallows under the eaves were leading forth their young, on top of the oven with the old cats lay a May kitten, which Adelka loved to pet. Her black hen was leading about a brood of half-grown chickens, and Sultan and Tyrol were again jumping into the water to catch water rats, which gave occasion to the old spinners to start the report that the foot bridge at The Old Bleachery was haunted by a waterman.

Adelka used to go with Vorsa to watch Spotty in the pasture; she also helped Grandmother collect herbs, or sat with her in the yard under the old linden, whose blossoms they dried for tea. Here also she recited her lessons to her. In the afternoon, when they went to meet the children returning from school, they took a stroll in the fields, where Grandmother stopped to see how her flax was doing. She loved to look at the broad, manorial wheat fields, for their full heads were fast turning yellow, and when the wind swept them into billows, it was such a beautiful sight that she could scarcely turn