Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/398

 some final determination which he specially dreaded.

“I think that you ought to go. If you wish it, I will conduct you,” said Bartos. And here the matter was half decided.

What a wholly different effect it had upon Staza. How gladly, without any hesitation, would she have run to the bedside of the invalid, how gladly would she have watched there, how gladly would she have tended her. How instantly would she have left everything that she might be present where there was most need of her. No one invited her, and she would have sped like the wind. The gravedigger invited Loyka, and Loyka prepared himself to go, as though he was preparing himself for his own death.

“How many years is it since I have been on the estate,” asked old Loyka, still undecided.

“Oh, many a long year,” said Bartos. “In the meantime your son has grown up and is like a nosegay—’tis a pleasure to look at him.”

At these words Staza let fall everything which she held in her hands, and for a long time was at cross purposes in all she did. She poured water from the ewer into the basin until it overflowed. When she observed this, she wished to wipe it up with something, and emptied the salt seller into the water imagining it was something she had forgotten to salt.