Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/308

 At first Frank did not at all comprehend why as soon as ever Staza entered the fields she grew so full of mirth and rapture. Her little eyes flashed playfully, she tripped along and skipped about as though she were on wires, her face joy itself, her words like songs. Bnt it could not be otherwise—man was not created to be exclusively sad and serious—gaiety is just as necessary as the sunlight; the young heart of little Staza was a proof of this: unconsciously she wished to compensate herself for all from which, equally unconsciously, she had been hitherto excluded.

But later Frank ceased to wonder at her gaiety; he also was himself saturated with it. When he went to the cemetery for Staza all the way thither he rejoiced beforehand at the thought of her enjoyment, and looked forward to her skips of delight and cries of pleasure, sometimes he half skipped about himself when he thought how she would skip about, sometimes he half began to carol when he thought how she would sing and carol.

And so Frank began to acquire in the parish the reputation of a vagabond who could scarcely be tethered to his home, and we cannot gainsay the correctness of this opinion, he was a vagabond, and became more and more of one every day, so that already he found very little pleasure in his home, and was glad if only he could sneak away out of sight somewhere behind the barn. Sometimes when