Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/285

 pedlar, and all who were still present, looked at him in a kind of uncertainty to see whether it affected them also.

But Joseph did not leave them long in suspense. He leered at their things, he leered at them, and said “You must take it all away by this evening.”

And here the cloth pedlar and the kalounkar looked at Joseph as though they would have said “Art thou that Joseph who sat here beside us, and listened to our story-telling.”

And out loud the kalounkar said “I must entreat you, dear Mister Joseph, to ask our good old master and mistress to come hither that we may thank them for all their kindness. We do not venture to present ourselves in their apartments, and yet how can we go away without bidding them adieu?”

“There is no need, I assure you, I will give them any message you may choose to leave.”

Here the old kalounkar said, almost crying, “Then tell them that the old kalounkar salutes them a hundred times, and that he thanks them for this roof which they have condescended to lend him for so many years, and that he never supposed that he would have to leave on the very day when he thought that a feast would be toward.’.

“I will tell him, I will not forget,” said Joseph, cutting short further explanations, turned and went into the principal apartment.