'
Nina and Jan, and a little girl named Lucie, kept shyly pointing out to me
the shelves of glass jars. They said nothing, but, glancing at me, traced
on the glass with their finger-tips the outline of the cherries and
strawberries and crabapples within, trying by a blissful expression of
countenance to give me some idea of their deliciousness.
`Show him the spiced plums, mother. Americans don't have those,' said one
of the older boys. `Mother uses them to make kolaches,' he added.
Leo, in a low voice, tossed off some scornful remark in Bohemian.
I turned to him. `You think I don't know what kolaches are, eh? You're
mistaken, young man. I've eaten your mother's kolaches long before that
Easter Day when you were born.'
`Always too fresh, Leo,' Ambrosch remarked with a shrug.
Leo dived behind his mother and grinned out at me.
We turned to leave the cave; Antonia and I went up the stairs first, and
the children waited. We were standing outside talking, when they all came
running up the steps together, big and little, tow heads and gold heads and
brown, and flashing little naked legs; a veritable explosion of life out of
the dark cave into the sunlight. It made me dizzy for a moment.
The boys escorted us to the front of the house, which I hadn't yet seen; in
farm-houses, somehow, life comes and goes by the back door.
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