for you can keep your collar from getting soiled! Give my cordial greetings to your respected father!”
“Yes, sir,” answered František.
“I’m not talking to you, you piece of patchwork!”
František could not see at once why his patches made impossible a message of greeting from the teacher to his father, but he began suspecting that there was, after all, some sort of difference between himself and the inspector’s son, so he gave the latter a good thrashing. He was driven out as an irredeemable rascal.
His parents sent him to the German schools. František scarcely understood a single word of German, and consequently progressed very miserably in his studies. His teachers regarded him as a careless fellow, although he surely toiled enough. They considered his morals spoiled, because he always defended himself when the boys shoved into him, and he was unable to give any explanation in German of the reason for his scuffles. The boys in reality had plenty to tease him about. Every little while he made some laughable mistake in German and in other ways furnished causes for derisive diversion. Their chief amusement, however, was occasioned one day when he arrived at school wearing a quilted green cap with a horizontal shade as thick as one’s finger, standing out from it. His father had purposely made a trip to the Old Town to select something special for him.
“This won’t break and neither will the sun burn you,”
