Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/150

 But when Malka only cried the more, he looked at her and said “Poor, poor thing, don’t cry any more, it can’t be helped.”

When that afternoon he drove off with his sand, he felt as though all the time he had Malka’s tears in his own heart, and sometimes for a score paces his throat was parched, and “hee!” remained only in ‘posse,’ or it stuck in his throat, and he felt as though he should cry if he succeeded in saying it. He cracked his whip moodily, and the lash curled itself round the handle like a flag round its flagstaff when the fête is over. His swearing was such that the horses could make nothing of it, and stopped continually, both at the ale-house, the blacksmith’s, the fruit stall, and the tobacconist’s.

When Malka came with dinner on the following day, Poldik scrutinised her while she was still in the distance to see whether she was crying. She was not crying, and consequently when she approached Poldik smiled faintly. He was hungry, and when he had half finished his dinner, he said “Malka, you are a capital cook.” On this even Malka smiled faintly, and Poldik gave his horses their oats. That afternoon you might have heard Poldik’s “hee” from one end of the street to the other, and he swore more in jest than in earnest, so that the horses were puzzled to know what it all meant. Even his own pace was fresher than usual, so that he overtook his vehicle and found himself walking by