Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/276

 “Dear children,” said Loyka, “so long as we manage the estate, we shall also dwell here in the principal house, and you will be banished for the time to the pensioner’s (vejminkar’s) house, where dwelt your grandfather. When we cease to manage the estate we shall ourselves go into the pensioner’s house, and you will shift hither into the principal building.”

Barushka said “Dear parent, say no more about it at present; what you settle, that same must be; and were you to settle that we should take up our abode for the six years even in the two chambers where lodge your humbler guests, I would still bear you on my arms.”

At these Barushkine periods Joseph only smiled and nodded as if to testify that he agreed with every thing that Barushka had said.

There are people who give way to genuine weeping as soon as they hear anything repeated in a solemn manner, even though the words repeated be wholly destitute of meaning to them. We hear parents weep to whom their children repeat the polite platitudes their instructor has taught them, and which are quite unintelligible both to the parents and to the children. We hear strangers and members of a family weep at a wedding as soon as a withered old parson begins to patter from a book divers reflections and pious admonitions; we hear strangers, too, weep at a funeral as soon as the