said, very sententiously: “My dear Vlček, man must not live for today, we must think for the future. We God—granting—will get through life somehow, but Elška is young and that we must keep in mind. To save money—how in the name of the dear God can we do it—when we have none! Some feather-beds, her dowry—that is all she will have as an inheritance from us—and that is very little. The world takes note of these (and at this Pepinka opened her palm and with her other hand went through the pantomime of counting coins)—and her Prague aunt has countless numbers of them. Maybe Elška will win her favor. It is only for her own good that we are leaving her there.”
The sexton acquiesced in every particular.
The Prague aunt had been ill for years. From the time of her husband’s death she always wrote to her brother-in-law and sister-in-law that she had been kept alive only by medicines and if her physician did not thoroughly understand her constitution she would long ago be lying in the holy field. Suddenly, however, Elška wrote that her aunt had a new physician who had advised that she take a daily bath in cold water, walk a great deal, eat and drink heartily, and that she would soon be cured. Her aunt had obeyed and was now as healthy as a lynx.
“Hm, such new-fangled treatments. If that’s the case, Elška can come home at once.” All Miss Pepinka ordered was faithfully carried out. That very day the hostler had to pull out the carriage from the shed and
