"How on earth does he manage to compose such beautiful lines!"
Which exclamation inspired the schoolmaster with fresh courage, and, raising his voice, he continued haranguing the assembled friends in the dead woman's name, not forgetting a single one, and there was not a dry eye among them.
For some time after they had buried Mrs. Gongoly the grand doings at the funeral were still the talk of the place, and even at the funeral the old women had picked out pretty Anna Tyurek as the successor of Mrs. Gongoly, and felt sure it would not be long before her noted "mentyék" had an owner. (Every well-to-do Slovak peasant buys a long cloak of sheepskin for his wife; it is embroidered outside in bright colors, and inside is the long silky hair of the Hungarian sheep. It is only worn on Sundays and holidays, and is passed on from one generation to another.)
The mourners had hardly recovered from the large quantities of brandy they had imbibed in order to drown their sorrow, when they had to dig a new grave; for János Srankó had followed Mrs. Gongoly. In olden times they had been good friends, before Mrs. Gongoly was engaged; and now it seemed as though they had arranged their departure from this world to take place at the same time.
They found Srankó dead in his bed, the morning after the funeral; he had died of an apoplectic fit. Srankó was a well-to-do man, in fact a "mágná." (The fifteen richest peasants in a Slovak village are called "mágnás" or "magnates.") He had three hundred sheep grazing in his meadows and several acres of ploughed land, so he ought to have a grand funeral too. And Mrs. Srankó was not idle, for she went herself to the schoolmaster, and then to the priest, and said she wished everything to be as it had been at Mrs. Gongoly's funeral. Let it cost what it might, but the Srankós were not less than the Gongolys. She wished two priests to read the funeral service, and four choir-boys to attend in their best black cassocks, the bell was to toll all the time, and so on, and so on. Father János nodded his head.
"Very well, all shall be as you wish," he said, and then proceeded to reckon out what it would cost.
"That's all right," said Mrs. Srankó, "but please, your reverence, put the red thing in too, and let us see how much more it will cost."
"What red thing?"
"Why, what you held over your head at Mrs. Gongoly's funeral. Oh, it was lovely!"
The young priest could not help smiling.