“Surely, Mr. Vavřena?”
“Miss Elis, dinner, please!” Frýbort called from the next room. “We are in a hurry!”
The bright May day warmed toward noon. The bishopric bell pealed; then the sound of the noon bell ceased. Registrar Roubínek was in the act of eating his dinner. It was most properly to his liking. Miss Lotty was somewhat silent. Mother led the conversation almost alone to-day, for Lenka never spoke much; besides, she had to get up from the table often and go to the kitchen to superintend the serving. The joy of the morning had not left her face yet. Whenever she passed the window, she could not forbear to look down to the Piarist College. At other times she looked serious, to-day a smile frequently appeared on her lips, especially when her aunt related how agitated this first of May was, that she noticed a great commotion down town, and that especially students swarmed in front of the college and in the city like bees.
“That is because of the prohibition. Who would not be sorry ,too?” exclaimed Lotty, and her smooth face darkened.
The registrar paid no attention to the conversation. Just then, however, he stopped as if petrified. His hand, carrying a dumpling on the fork, did not reach his mouth, and his eyes, leaving king Herod, wonderingly turned to his wife and daughter, who in the first moment also bent their surprise-filled eyes at him. Lotty bounced to the window and looked out.
“Music, really music!” cried Lenka; but she regained her composure at once.
“What’s that? Music at noon? That never happened before!” wondered Mr. Roubínek.
“Oh yes, it did when ‘majales’—,” quickly rejoined the daughter.
“May be, they, after all—,” and Mrs. Roubínek stepped to the window, while Fritz, throwing the fork down, jumped up and without his cap flew down the street like an arrow.
The reproving voice of his father did not overtake him.
The music, which sounded faintly from afar, was growing more distinct until it thundered near the college. There the band stopped. In the mean time an unusual commotion arose in the streets.
People were running out of the houses, hastening to the windows, and down town everybody was bent in the direction of the college; there were young people, citizens, and most of all philosophers there, with whom the whole eminence between the castle, philosophical college, and the college proper in a short time swarmed.
While everybody at Roubínek’s was thus amazed, except Lenka, to whom Vavřena had whispered the secret yesterday, the home instructor unexpectedly entered. He bowed and announced that the philosophical celebration of the “majales” was to be held to-day, to which celebration he respectfully extended his invitation. In a while, he continued, the whole student procession, together with the band, would leave and go, as formerly, to the Nedošín grove.
Before the amazed Mrs. Roubínek could ask for an explanation, Vavřena was gone.
Lotty, overjoyed, hastened to the cabinet and took out the new spring dress.
“Hurry, mother, hurry, we must not miss it!”
“Hold on, Lotty, hold on! Who knows how things stand!” solemnly remonstrated the registrar.
“Oh, something wrong again! Surely in the last moment they were granted permission!” asserted mother, who, in such matters, had the deciding voice.
On the street the crowd grew, and with it also the noise and the din. The music ceased, and a cry like the simultaneous discharge of many guns rose into the bright air:
“Vivat Academia!”
And the whole band fell in with a mighty flourish.
“Vivant professores!” cried a few hundred young voices; and a festive flourish resounded again.
“Vivant professores!” repeated Roubínek, somewhat satisfied as he nodded his head.
What bustle, confusion and haste ensued! A strange thing! Lenka brought everything, helped her aunt and Lotty to dress, and still herself was ready, as if she had prepared before-hand for the event. She never went anywhere with her aunt, even when the latter invited her, but that day “that headstrong girl,” as Mrs. Roubínek called her, came to ask for permission to go to the grove.
The aunt looked inquiringly at her husband.
“Let her go, she can take Fritz along! They never saw the show anyway!”
So it was decided. For the first time Mrs. Roubínek saw the face of that otherwise serious-looking girl brighten and her eyes sparkle. After that the registrar dismissed the affair from his mind. Sitting in his easy chair, he smoked his pipe and looked at king Herod; when he finished, he would go to the office.
(To be continued.)
The Sokol Union of America is making preparations for participation in the great Sokol athletic meet which it is planned to hold in Prague next summer. One or more ships will be chartered to accomodate the thousands who desire to see the old country under the Czechoslovak flag.
Among 76 Yanks who received the military medal of honor early in July, there was one of Czechoslovak blood, Sergeant Matthew Kočák, Company C, 5th regiment of Marines.
John Wottawa, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, was appointed attache to Richard Crane, American minister to Prague.
