Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/147

 meant “No; he does not limp to-day,” or he saw the white horse in the forenoon with one of its shoes off, and when he met it in the afternoon the shoe was still missing. Here Poldik looked at the carter, and and this look meant “It is still with one of its shoes off!” The owner of the white horse similarly replied by a look, and in it Poldik heard or saw the words “we have been very busy to-day, and really have not had time.”

Poldik’s regularity was shown moreover in the way he spoke to his horses. Just as if he had been laying out a road, he counted twenty Poldikian steps—and only after this precise measurement, pulled the rein, cracked the whip, and shouted “Hee!” You might wager your head it would not come one step before or after the twenty paces. Only I must except certain special occasions. On Monday when he put to the horses after their Sabbath rest he shouted ‘hee!’ twenty times during the first twenty steps. That was to compensate for all that had been omitted on the Sunday. And this single circumstance proves to me that he did not usually shout out in his sleep or in moments of rest and abstraction. Moreover this exclamation occurred more frequently early in the morning during the first few steps, and again in the afternoon after the midday meal.

In this Poldikian “hee!” rested a whole dictionary. Generally it was only a common-place incite-