Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/330

 your daughter on to a farm just as if a servant had made his daughter a queen, and now to-day my lord has a hundred tastes to sit on the throne himself also. Not lower oneself, indeed!” and similar things said Vena, though now Kmoch no longer heard them. He had again departed to the young folk where they looked on the world with a different pair of eyes.

It seemed as though only to-day the new mistress celebrated her entry into the farm house. As it fell out, so it fell out. Hogsheads of beer were rolled into the courtyard; rosolek was produced, the servants were invited to it, drank, whistled, laughed, and sang, so that even people from the village collected about the courtyard, placed themselves in the gateway, and some even posted themselves in the courtyard, just as on the day when the news of the death of Frank’s grandfather lured them hither, and they had talked to another about the life of the deceased.

They came just as if to-day there was another corpse at the farmstead, and it was old Loyka who was being buried in the pension house; perhaps he was not much unlike, not much better off than a corpse.

To-day it seemed as though the farmstead of the Loykas had regained its old appearance. For a good year or more the neighbours had disaccustomed themselves to come to the farm as they used to come