"That is certainly not true. Henry would quit the headsman's trade if his father died. He would go to Germany where nobody knows him, and try to get a professorship. He has promised me it a hundred times."
"Well, well, I know nothing. I only say what the cards say. Look now! There is the heart lady! Oh, what a joy awaits her. Her beloved is close at hand. That rose means burning love. That dog is fidelity. This dove-cot is felicity. This very day she will meet him."
"Go along with you, Pirka! It is all nonsense."
"Well, well, my little lady, we shall see. The cards never lie. This very night she will see him."
"He is far away; who knows how far?" sighed Michal.
"Yes, but I've a little buck-goat, and when I send him away and say to him, 'Go, bring me the pretty youth hither whom my lady dotes upon; so true as I came out of that well, my little buck-goat will bring the young man hither though he were even on the Turkish borders."
Michal began to grow frightened.
"Hither he shall not bring him," cried she.
"No, not into this hideous hole, perhaps, not into the house of the vihodar, but into a quiet little cot where the doves bill and coo on the gables."
"But how am I to get there? I should not care about sitting on the buck-goat."