the day young Hukac could be seen, seated at the table next to the door, his cap on one ear, his elbows out of his sleeves, and his lips moist with the golden beer. But he was handsome and eloquent, and it did not take him long to make Nanka understand him.
It was different with her father, although the young man came dressed in his Sunday best, and pressed his suit with the most fervid eloquence. But as Nanka persisted in her choice, Svejnoha was finally subdued.
“We may blow into the wind till our lungs ache, but it will still sing the old song. Hukac was certainly made for some woman. Was it for my Nanka? If so, God help her.”
All ended well, and Hukac was soon drinking to his bride’s health and considering what debts he could pay with her six hundred. Everything was beautiful, the wedding day, the wedding, Nanka’s outfit; but the most beautiful thing of all was the wedding gift that Svejnoha with a trembling hand gave his daughter just as they were ready to start for church. It was a set of jewelry: a brooch, twisted like a serpent; ear-rings with tassels that jingled as one moved them and a garnet cross on a chain so delicate that it seemed to be woven of gold thread. Nanka covered her eyes with her hand; the glitter of the jewels dazzled her.
If she had looked charming before, she was simply bewitching with the jewels on; no wonder that as Hukac gazed on her his lips grew moist, his mouth filled with a delectable sweetness. The old man must have a snug sum hidden away somewhere, or he never would have indulged in this extravagance.
So the front wheels of the family coach of the young married couple started quietly and smoothly; they ran without a single creak. “They are oiled with love,” the father said, “and pushed forward with several years of the father’s savings, they can’t help running smoothly.”
Svejnoha continued diligently and conscientiously to perform his own duties and those he owed the town. He did not thrust his presence upon the Hukac household. Why should he? Nanka often ran over to cheer him up. She did not praise her husband, but neither did she find fault with him, and her father was satisfied.
A year passed. The stork had not knocked at Hukac’s window, and the crows carried their precious burdens elsewhere.
Then the time came for the hind wheels to move. In small housekeeping, where reckoning is made only by hundreds, the front wheels do not go alone, and to start the hind ones proved no easy matter. Nanka grew pale, but never a word did she say to her father. One day Svejnoha himself began: “See here, my girl,” he said, as if he were talking to his porcelain pipe, “are you all well at home? Tell me something about yourself.”
Nanka played nervously with her apron, but not a word escaped her as to the thought that brought the crimson blood to her cheeks.
“We are all right, father,” she replied.
“That’s good!” rejoined her father, as he emptied the ashes from his pipe. In his heart he was hurt that she would not confide in him; she had belonged to him long before she ever belonged to Hukac, and as her father he had the right to advise and help her as far as it lay in his power. But he said no more, and waited.
* * *
It was time for St. Nicholas’s visit. For us old people the white haired, white bearded patriarch with the gilded switch, bishop’s mitre, stole, rosary and capacious pouch at the side, has little interest, unless we happen to have one or more golden heads that seek refuge in our laps before his venerable presence. But then, we were once just such little elves, droll in our wisdom, and insatiable in our demands, so we fully understand the significance of St. Nicholas and of that mysterious, holy, never to be forgotten evening of which we talked and dreamed and thought, for three hundred and sixty-four days of the year.
