Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/265

 threatening, he did not sally forth, and all that time was an extra hand at table in common with the other servants.

And many an occasion occurred, moreover, when Loyka’s hospitality was reckoned upon or missed. People came to have their sieves mended or their knives ground, and also people drove or walked round by the Loykas’ with their implements from the field.

Thither also came people from the village, and enquired “Is not the sieve maker here at your house? Is not the knife grinder here? We wanted sieves; we wanted to have our knives sharpened.” Without fail the sieve maker appeared regularly before harvest, and the knife grinder as regularly before the village festival.

In those chambers beside the coach house reigned life and jollity. There the conversation never flagged, and in the evening even Loyka, the peasant, and sometimes, finally, his wife would pay them a visit. Here all that occurred in the district of general interest was recapitulated. So that you might refer to the Loykas’ as to a well informed gazette. The kalounkar (tape pedlar) and the cloth pedlar tramped the whole district and had free access into every family—who then could know more than the cloth pedlar and the kalounkar?

And then when a fiddler and harper came, there was nothing for it but that he should play and sing