Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/267

 sharpen his wit, and from him every one must submit to receive some rebuff either spoken in jest or earnest. With his so-called folly Vena provoked much merriment, and by what he said in earnest he raised the merriment a degree higher; it is often the fate of truth that we receive it with laughter.

And thus so many mouths were fed on and off the estate that if Loyka, the peasant proprietor, had shewn all these guests the door, he might have given three shares of the produce as a pension to his father and still have had enough for himself. But, of course, such an idea had never even occurred to anyone; thus it had ever been on Loyka’s farm so long as he could remember; it had been thus all through the life-time of his grandfather and even earlier. And yet we have heard that Loyka, the peasant, went to law about every quarter of wheat with his own father. What congruity was there in all this?

All whom we have mentioned the tinkers, the family of the kalounkar, the cloth pedlar, the sieve maker, the knife grinder, the fiddlers and the harpers assembled at the Loykas’ when Frank’s grandfather died, and they were there when Frank led Staza to the farmstead. They assembled at his grandfather’s death as if they had been summoned.

The fiddlers and harpers considered it their duty to present themselves to see whether their services would be required. It was the custom in our