JUNE
157
MRS. LEDYNSKA (angrily): Just kindly keep these pleasant things to yourself. Nice places you are remembering . . .
JENIK: Stop, mother. . . You see Lidka's well on the way to blushing.
LIDKA (shrugging her shoulders): I don't understand it a bit.
JENIK (pointedly):. . . a very white blossom,ha, ha. . .
MRS. LEDYNSKA: Jenik, I've told you to leave off. . . If you've nothing better to say.
JENIK: 'Pon my soul, I don't know. . . (After a while.) Those bilberries those bilberries. . . You scent the woods, the heather, the resin. . . your heart runs about bare-footed, and gets torn on the brambles . . . the cuckoo wails. . . (He pretends to hiccough and slaps himself on the back several times.) Ha, ha, here we have to put up with a sort of pocket edition of nature. And then you wonder that I laugh. Everything's faked up here, everything calls out: Make no mistake, old chap, I'm not butter, I'm—margarine.
LIDKA : Mother, that's our special department again. . .
MRS. LEDYNSKA: It's all a lot of silly chatter. . .
JENIK (finishing the meal): I notice that the opinions vary . . . (With pathos.) Lidka, you enrol under my banner. Let youth keep to-
12
