Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/309

 he went with Staza and they could not esconce themselves in the two chambers by the coach-house he turned away with her at his side, and they explored some choice nook outside the village. If anyone had enquired of Frank what his home looked like, he would only have described those two chambers in the courtyard—nothing else belonged to his conception of home, and no one was associated with these chambers—neither father nor mother nor brother. All that appertained to them was that they were empty, and that he was in them and that Staza was in them with him.

Later his parents wished to attach him to his home, but it was already too late. They set him work to do a-field, and there he went willingly enough. But if he had to work in the courtyard, he soon sought the easiest means of escape into the country; and when once he was out of doors and in the country outside, any one might be sure of finding him on the road to the burial ground, unless he were hiding by the hedgerow or in some newly delved grave.

And now even Joseph began to chaff him for his vagabond ways, and his parents could not deny that their elder son had some foundation for his sarcasms. But we know very well that Joseph was always the spoilt child of the house, and that Frank was the fifth wheel of the coach; and therefore Joseph’s oracular sentences carried no great weight with