Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/27

 stand, either of what Krista wanted to do or what she had got in her mind. But children quickly adapt themselves to everything. They pretend a tile to be a basin, a fragment of crumbling earth to be a cake, a pebble is a house, a bit of wood is a shopkeeper, the trestle of a table is a school, a scrap of rag is a shopful of dresses, a scrap of paper is a book. The fancies of children are omnipotent, and if a child says “our apartments with papa and mamma are better than the whole world,” it is true from the moment that the child says it.

So when Krista got up to bring Venik’s mamma, Venik got up also and began to make his mamma’s grave beside the hollow tree. He grubbed in the earth with his pocket knife. And when he had done with the grave Krista brought his mamma. She had her lapful of her, and had collected her all over the wood and over the hillside.

And now they began to lay her in the tomb. First Krista strewed the grave with moss that mamma might feel it soft beneath her. Then she took a briar in full bloom and said, “look, that is her heart,” and she laid the briar in the middle of the grave. Then she took two willow wands and said, “Look, those are her hands, and laid them next the heart. Then two other wands were for two feet, and finally she took from her lap sweet marjoram, and said, “Look, that is her head,” and laid it on the top. Nothing more was wanted in her opinion