As they sped through the night on that wonderful ride, the man told Jaroslav of a school in Brno where boys learned all sorts of trades, and not only to run cars like the one they were in, but even to make them. When Jaroslav got out on the edge of the village, and panted home in the starlight, his life had taken a definite turn.
But this story is not to tell of how the cow really arrived in two weeks’ time, or of how Jaroslav gradually paid for it in rabbit skins, or of how at last he went to the technical school in Brno. It is to tell only of his home-coming, of how he reached the house about the same time as his mother, coming from Buchlovy; of how she forgave him at sight of his radiant face; of how Lidka brought him the first summer apples in her apron, and of how, as he sat on the bench which was built around the porcelain stove, he told them of his great adventure. And all the while the baby slept, and Flick lay on the floor with his nose between his master’s feet, and the dedky winked at one another in the candlelight.
Note: It is a fact that an ancient road led from Pressburg (now the capital of Slovakia) to the Baltic. It was also called Great Amber Road and was used chiefly by Wendish Traders. The swamp west of Pressburg marked the No Man’s Land between Roman Pannonia and the realm of Slavs.
THE LOST BROOK
When Masha came to visit her cousins in the mountains, Treska thought she had never seen such beautiful clothes as those that Masha wore, and Masha thought she had never seen so sad a village as the one in which Treska lived.
She herself came from a land bright with wheat fields, where the pink and white poppies grow shoulder high, and where the little plastered houses are painted gayly and have red tiled roofs.
Here a cold rain was falling, and the mist swept low over the forests of black fir. Masha did not know that the clouds hid beautiful mountains. She saw only their gray edges, caught and torn on the tops of the dark trees. The houses were all of wood, unpainted and built like log cabins, except that they had broad eaves and high shingled roofs. The battened chinking between the logs was whitewashed, so that looking down upon the village as the girls came over the hill it seemed like a collection of striped black-and-white boxes with pointed covers.
Once inside Treska’s house it was as cosy as possible, with geraniums in the windows, a pendulum clock, bright plates on the wall, and blue-and-red checkered coverings over the feather beds, which were piled nearly to the low-beamed ceiling. There were benches on two sides of the room, and a table set with soup plates. From the oven came the delicious smell of huckleberry buns, which Treska’s mother was baking in honor of Masha’s coming.
Masha was in holiday costume because she had come on the train. Treska looked her over with envy. She wore a white linen cap with a broad band of brocaded ribbon, and a frill of lace round her face. Her collar and full white sleeves were edged with black embroidery, and her bodice of crimson and green silk was trimmed with gold lace. There were bunches of yellow flowers on her short orange skirt, and with her dark blue apron heavily embroidered, and a golden and green ribbon tied about her waist and falling to the hem of her dress in front, she looked like a big bouquet.
Treska had fine clothes, too, but they were more sober in color and pattern than Masha’s, and she never wore them except on grand occasions. Rather shyly she opened the big painted chest, which stood against the wall, to show Masha her own pretty things—the gold beads and netted cap, worked with disks of bright silk, and the dark cambric handkerchief, which she wore over it when she went to church, and which was so long that it covered her flowered bodice like a shawl, and reached to her scarlet skirt and deep blue apron.