the children. He looked
a little disappointed when his wife showed him a big box of candy I had
got in Denver--she hadn't let the children touch it the night before. He
put his candy away in the cupboard, 'for when she rains,' and glanced
at the box, chuckling. 'I guess you must have hear about how my family
ain't so small,' he said.

Cuzak sat down behind the stove and watched his womenfolk and the little
children with equal amusement. He thought they were nice, and he thought
they were funny, evidently. He had been off dancing with the girls
and forgetting that he was an old fellow, and now his family rather
surprised him; he seemed to think it a joke that all these children
should belong to him. As the younger ones slipped up to him in his
retreat, he kept taking things out of his pockets; penny dolls, a wooden
clown, a balloon pig that was inflated by a whistle. He beckoned to the
little boy they called Jan, whispered to him, and presented him with a
paper snake, gently, so as not to startle him. Looking over the boy's
head he said to me, 'This one is bashful. He gets left.'

Cuzak had brought home with him a roll of illustrated Bohemian papers.
He opened them and began to tell his wife the news, much of which seemed
to relate to one person. I heard the name Vasakova, Vasakova, repeated
several times with lively interest, and presently I asked him whether he
were talking about the singer, Maria Vasak.

'You know? You have heard, maybe?' he asked incredulously. When I
assured him that I had heard her, he pointed out her picture and told me
that Vasak had broken her leg, climbing in the Austrian Alps, and would
not be able to fill her engagements. He seemed delighted to find that I
had heard her sing in London and in Vienna; got out his pipe and lit
it to enjoy our talk the better. She came from his part of Prague. His
father used to mend her shoes for her when she was a student. Cuzak
questioned me about her looks, her popularity, her voice; but he
particularly wanted to know whether I had noticed her tiny feet, and
whether I thought she had saved much money. She was extravagant, of
course, but he hoped she wouldn't squander everything, and have nothing
left when she was old. As a young man, working in Wienn, he had seen a
good many artists who were old and poor, making one glass of beer last
all evening, and 'it was not very nice, that.'

When the boys came in from milking and feeding, the long table was laid,