His guests would gladly have taken off their cloaks, but where should they put them down? It would have been ruin to clean clothes to come in contact with anything in the room.
"I should like to sit down somewhere, Uncle Abris," said Sizika, looking round her with innocent scrutiny.
"Well, my dear, here are plenty of chairs, and a sofa," said Uncle Abris.
"What! _may_ I brush off all this pretty dust?" asked Sizika roguishly. "I thought it was put here to dry."
Karely laughed; while his mother put her finger to her lips, and shook her head; and Uncle Abris answered quietly, "Dust we are, and unto dust we must return, and therefore we need not despise dust;" and, in order to strengthen the golden precept, he lifted the flaps of his coat, and, wiping three chairs for his guests, seated himself on a fourth.
The lady placed herself down opposite to her brother. One was silent, the other did not speak; and so they remained nearly an hour. Occasionally one or other would sigh deeply, "Heighho!" on which the other would reply, a quarter of an hour after, "Ay, ay!"
Karely having gone out to look at the horses, Erzsike went to the window, and, wiping one of the panes with her pocket handkerchief, tried to look through it. You must not be perplexed, dear readers, at our having first called this merry little fairy Sizika, then Erzsike; both denominations come from the same source, and there is perhaps no name in the Hungarian language which admits of so many variations to represent the various gradations from the utmost refinement to the greatest coarseness; hence the tender, caressing Siza, the gay, roguish Erzsike, the robust, noisy Erzsu, and the dirty, untidy Boske.
It never entered Uncle Abraham's head to ask his guests if they wanted anything; he only sat and sighed. Matyi, the coachman, a smart lad from Lower Hungary, now entered; he had been a csikos,[6] and was an inveterate specimen of cleverness and roguish insolence.
[Footnote 6: _Csikos_, who take care of the horses and studs of the vast meadows or heaths, called _puszta_.]
"Is there any hay to be sold here, sir?" he asked, saluting the master of the house.
"Not for myself, sir, but for my horses--that is, not for my horses, but for my master's."