would not permit the children to even come near that day, and on Sunday, when he put on his top coat, they did not dare even look at it for fear they’d soil it.
Matýsek now whirled about proudly in a clean, warm room into which he’d call the children ten times a day to hear them repeat who was master in the house and from which he would ten times expel them for the most varied crimes such as disrespectful coughing or sneezing in his presence, but mainly for silence when he questioned them regarding his own importance and significance. Some days the children did little else than open the door to each other in a succession of such “exercises.”
Barka did not cease to marvel at the fortune which was theirs, especially when her eyes fell on the wall beside the stove, where hung a spoon rack, painted red, made for eight sizes and four pewter spoons on each, the kind she had always longed for. Sometimes she gazed at them for an hour at a time. She and Matýsek now ate only with pewter spoons and from porcelain dishes. They did not have a single wooden spoon nor wooden bowl in the whole house. Neither was there anything else of mean and lowly associations to be found in their dwelling from attic to cellar. It was not to be wondered at that Matýsek would not permit it and that Barka gave her consent.
Matýsek carried out his oft-repeated intentions, and renouncing all peasant labor, began weaving brooms. He would not let Barka go to pasture the cattle nor
