Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/243

 little one, sprinkle it: maminka will sleep the lighter; for the tears of a child are the fairest waters of purification.” When he wished to lower the coffin into the grave he saw that there was to help him only one servant who had driven the dead Katchka in an open ribbed wagon. “Is there no one here but thee?” inquired Bartos angrily.

“And who then would come to the funeral of such a,” said the servant, and leered in a very saucy manner.

After this Bartos was silent, and filled in the grave over the corpse. When the grave was filled in, the little girl plaintively lamented that she had no one to go to, and that no one wanted her in the village.

“And why does no one want her,” asked Bartos of the servant.

“And who, then, would trouble his head about her, about such a ,” said the servant again, and once more leered in the same saucy way.

“What dost thou mean by ‘such a one,’ thou boor!” retorted Bartos on the servant. “Did any other than He who created thee, create her? Wilt thou make thyself her judge, because she came into the world thus and not otherwise. Thou knowest, forsooth, who is such an one, and who is not such an one.”

And then he gave the servant a trifle to salve his wounded pride.