"Let us run and lead them out, Banda Bela," cried Marushka. "You can
make the pigs follow you and I can quiet the geese. It is too bad to
have the homecoming of their High-Born Graciousnesses spoiled by these
stupids!" Marushka dashed into the throng of geese calling to them in
soft little tones. They recognized her at once and stopped their
fluttering as she called them by the names she had given them when she
was goose girl and they all flocked about her. Then she sang a queer
little crooning song, and they followed her down the street as she
walked toward the goose green, not knowing how else to get them out of
the way.
Banda Bela meantime was having an amusing time with his friends the
pigs. They were all squealing so loudly that they could scarcely hear
his voice, so he bethought himself of his music and began to play. It
was but a few moments before the piggies heard and stopped to listen.
Banda Bela had played much when he was watching the pigs on the moor,
and his violin told them of the fair green meadow where they found such
good things to eat, and of the river's brink with its great pools of
black slime in which to wallow. They stopped their mad dashing about and
gathered around the boy, and he, too, turned and led them from the
village.
It was a funny sight, this village procession. First came Marushka in
her little peasant's costume, decked with her wreath and garlands of
forget-me-nots, and followed by her snow-white geese. Next, Banda Bela,
playing his violin and escorting his pigs, while last of all came the
motor car of the High-Born Baron, the Baron looking amused, the Baroness
in spasms of laughter.
"Oh, Léon," she cried. "Could our friends who drive on the Os
Budavara[12] see us now! Such a procession! That child who leads is the
most beautiful little creature and so unconscious, and the boy's playing
is wonderful."
[Illustration: "FIRST CAME MARUSHKA"]
"They must be the Gypsy children Aszszony Semeyer adopted. We saw them
when we were here last year," replied her husband. "What a story this
would make for the club! We must give these children a florin for their
timely aid."
But the children, unconscious of this pleasant prospect, led their
respective friends back into the village by another way, so that it was
not until the next day that the "High-Born" ones had a chance to see
them, and this time in an even more exciting adventure than that of the
village procession. It was the motor car again which caused the trouble.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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