But instead of standing Ruzena was running home, half afraid that the funny tinker might really cut off the hair. And as she ran she heard him sing the first part of a folk song that he had just learned from some peasants in the neighboring brother land of Moravia:
"M—m, m—m, two mosquitoes married to-day;
M—m, m—m, not a drop of wine have they."
"Does the tinker go all over the world?" Ruzena asked her mother, humming the tune that her quick ear had caught.
"M-mm, yes," her mother answered rather absent-mindedly. She was busy preparing the supper which the tinker was to eat with them.
"He does his wiring well," she said as she put down the pot he had fixed. "He's somewhat rattle-brained, I think sometimes, but he learns a lot more going around than if he stayed here. He hasn't come from any distant country to us. Only from Nytra. You might ask him about that place. If we don't get him started on something else he will bring up the Czechs again and what they're doing and what we're not. Since we can't do anything, it's no use repeating all that."
Ruzena remembered when all were seated at the table, and asked the tinker if he would tell them something about Nytra.
"I learned in school," she concluded proudly, "that it was the capital of the great Moravian Kingdom."
The tinker looked pleased. "Yes, under Svatopluk," he said. "Then we had nothing of which to be ashamed. But do you know anything about that Svatopluk?"
Ruzena shook her head.
"Never mind," said the tinker kindly. "There's some grown people in this village that don't know any more. Do you know?" and he turned to Jozef.