Page:The grandmother; a story of country life in Bohemia.pdf/91

Rh time enough, you will not be without wooers." The people, however, thought differently; they said Victorka was proud, that she was waiting for some one to come after her in a carriage; they prophesied that pride goes before a fall, that who chooses the longest chooses the worst. They uttered these and similar sayings.

At that time the chasseurs were quartered in the village, and one of them began to follow Victorka. When she went to church, he went, too, and always posted himself where he could look straight at her. When she went cutting grass, he was sure to be somewhere near her; in short, he followed her like a shadow. People said he was not in his right mind; when they spoke of him in her presence she would say: "Why does that soldier follow me? He doesn't speak, he is like a churl; I am afraid of him. I feel the cold chills creeping over me whenever he is around, and those eyes of his make my head swim."

Those eyes, those eyes! everybody said they meant nothing good; some said that at night they shone like live coals, and that those dark eyebrows which overshadowed them like ravens' wings, meeting in the middle, were a sure sign that he possessed the power of "the evil eye." Some pitied him, saying: "Dear Lord! is a person to be blamed for such a fault, when he was born with it? And, besides, such eyes injure only some people; others need not be afraid of them." Nevertheless, when he happened to look at one of the village children, the mother hastened to wipe the child's face with a white cloth; and when a child became ill, the gossips at once said that the dark chasseur