Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/335



HEN Frank learnt that his parents dwelt in the pension house, he began to yearn for home. To his shame, be it said, not for the sake of his parents to whom he had already become disaccustomed owing to his fondness for his grand-father, but for his own sake, because he longed to see once more a spot where he had fashioned for himself in company with his grandfather so special a mode of existence that he fancied on the whole estate there was nothing to be compared with it.

As we know, Frank at present tramped the world, and, indeed, in the true sense of tramping. But it is much stranger that his parents should have permitted him to tramp abroad, aye, that later they wholly ceased to search for him in order to forbid it. From the beginning old Loyka had learnt that he walked about with the kalounkar, the fiddler, or the sieve-maker—let him walk with them, thought Loyka to himself, to be sure, even at home he was constantly with them when he was not with his grandfather and it did him no harm. He was rather pleased to think that the kalounkar, the musicians,