Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/217

 pensioner on his bounty, he seemed all at once to be beside himself. “A murrain upon you every morning, ye peasant proprietors, who do not know what to do with your father when he is pensioned off. Only let me have power in my hands for half a day, I would drive you round the circle, I can tell you! Every one of you should be pensioned off at once for two years at least. A son cannot have a korets of land reaped for his father, because the father is pensioned off; blast all such sons, say I.”

“’Tis a poor fool, and yet he hath right on his side,” said some of the neighbours, “but he is touched here.” Others again said, “How, then, dare you say this, Vena, are you not a dependent on Loyka’s farm?” To this Vena replied very indignantly, “If I am on Loyka’s farm, I work for myself, I have no need of any one to work for me. Also I speak for myself, I have no need that anyone should speak for me.”

The neighbours only said to this: “He knows how to give cut for cut, ’twere better let him be.”

Here the Mayor again interposed: “Well! well! old people are sometimes rather laughable; in their time everything was quite different, you know. While Loyka lay on the rye which he had cut, he said: “Now-a-days, my good gossip, there are not such winters as there used to be. In my young day, the sparrows fell from the eaves and partridges and hares were frozen like clods of earth. More