Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/83

any price. You won’t change them, nor I. When a bride goes to keep house for her lover before the wedding, she lets herself in for much trouble, but in return her husband will love and honour her to the end of their days. You can’t have something for nothing, honour is dearly bought. The only thing about it that annoys me is that your father should have proved to be in the right. Fancy you letting it come to that! Why couldn’t you let Lukas rave and fume? Why retort? It serves you right that you should have had a taste at once of what obstinacy and bad temper lead to. In the future you will be careful not to go too far. But your anger doesn’t impress me at all. It is like thunder in the spring, short and furious; everything is the more beautiful and luscious for it afterwards. You will make no one believe that you can live without Lukas or he without you. You make me laugh. You two will attract each other for ever; as long as you live on this earth you won’t get rid of each other. When Lukas comes to his senses he will be annoyed with himself for the trick he had played on you; and if you will sit here and think about it till to-morrow morning, all sorts of things will occur to you which you