Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/313

 Certainly he is not at his home, for it is now a week since he has been at our house.”

It was exactly a week since Frank had quitted his home.

“But I heard say that he had gone with the kalounkar (tape pedlar), and that he was walking the world with him,” said Bartos to the astonished parent.

“With the kalounkar? Going all over the world with him?” said Loyka, repeating the words of the gravedigger.

When he returned home he told his wife what he had heard, and they despatched Vena to look for the kalounkar and bring Frank home from him.

Vena departed and came back after several weeks with the news that Frank had tramped it with the kalounkar, but then, so it was said, he had met with a harper, had quitted the kalounkar, and gone with the harper.

“Dolt! idiot!” said Loyka, “then you ought to have discovered the harper and brought back Frank. And so begin the search again—the sooner, the better—and without Frank do not venture near my house.”

Vena departed and found the harper, but Frank, so it was said, had gone off with a fiddler and now, doubtless, was once more with the kalendarkalounkar [sic]. “Pantata,” explained Vena, “I should never have ventured home again as long as I lived, for no one