This knowledge of the topography of South Bohemia, which Svejk had acquired once during manoeuvres there, filled the good lady's heart with a local patriotic glow.
'Then you certainly know the butcher Pejchar in the square at Protivin?'
'Why, of course I do!
He's my brother.
At home they all like him very much,' said Svejk.
'He's very good and helpful. He has good meat and gives good weight.'
'You aren't by chance one of Jare5's sons?' asked the maid, beginning to feel drawn to the unknown soldier.
'I am.'
'And which Jares, the one from Krc near Protivin or from Razice?'
'From Razice.'
'Does he still deliver beer?'
'Yes, he does still.'
'But he must be a long way past sixty already?'
'He was sixty-eight last spring,' answered Svejk composedly.
'Now he has got a dog and it goes around with him.
It sits on his cart.
It's just the same kind of dog as that one there running after the sparrows. A lovely little dog, very lovely.'
'That's ours,' Svejk's new friend explained to him.
'I work for the colonel here.
Don't you know our colonel?'
'I do.
He's bally intelligent,' said Svejk.
'In Budejovice we had a colonel like that.'
'Our master is very strict, and when people were recently saying that we'd been beaten in Serbia, he came home in a frightful rage, threw all the plates around in the kitchen and wanted to give me notice.'
'So that's your doggie?' Svejk interrupted her.
'It's a pity that my lieutenant can't stand dogs, because I'm very fond of them myself.'
He was quiet for a moment and suddenly blurted out:
'But not every dog will eat anything.'
'Our Fox is very faddy.
At one time he wouldn't eat any meat at all, but now he does again.'
'And what does he like to eat best?'
'Liver, boiled liver.'
'Veal or pork?'
'It's all the same to him.' Svejk's 'fellow countrywoman' smiled, since she took his last question for an unsuccessful attempt to be funny.
They walked together for a little and then they were joined by the stable pinscher which was put on to the chain.
It was very friendly to Svejk and tried to tear his trousers with its muzzle. It jumped up at him, but suddenly stopped as though it sensed what Svejk was planning for it, and walked sadly and despondently, looking sideways at Svejk as though it wanted to say:
'And so now it's coming to me too?'
Then she told him as well that she came here with the dog every evening at six o'clock and that she didn't trust any of the men in Prague; she had once put an advertisement in the newspaper, to which she received an answer from a locksmith offering to marry her. But he had wheedled eight hundred crowns out of her for some invention of his and disappeared.
In the country people were definitely more honest.
If she were to marry she would only take a man from the country, and only after the end of the war.
She regarded war marriages as stupid, because a war bride was generaily left a widow.
Svejk gave her good reason to hope that he would come at six o'clock and went away to teii his friend, Blahnik, that the dog ate liver of any kind.
'I' II treat him to ox liver,' Blahnik decided.
'That was how I got the St Bernard belonging to the company director, Vydra, which was a joily faithful animal.
Tomorrow 1'11 bring you the dog safe and sound.'
Blahnik was as good as his word.
When Svejk had finished cleaning the apartment in the morning he heard a barking at the door and Blahnik dragged in the protesting stable pinscher, which was even more bristly than nature had bristled it.
It roiled its eyes wildly and looked so surly that it recailed a hungry tiger in a cage in a zoological garden when it sees a weii-fed visitor standing before it.
It ground its teeth and growled, as though it wanted to say:
'I' II tear you to pieces. I'll gobble you up.'