“What! so much money for stamps? Impossible!” protested the old man and his echoing wife. “You are already sending away florins’ and florins’ worth on these letters!” “But we want a stock of stamps to keep for our convenient use,” we urged. “Yes, yes, you want to use them; but why don’t you buy them as you need them?” was the reply, as he shut the drawer under his elbow, apparently loath to part with any of its precious contents. Arguments were useless, and we gave up the notion of securing a variety, and tempered our demand to a humble request for a few ten-kreutzer stamps for foreign postage. “Ah, no!” he said. “I can’t let you have any ten-kreutzer stamps, for the sheets haven’t been broken into yet, and it is near the end of the month, when I make up my books, and I can’t have my accounts confused by selling ten-kreutzer stamps to any one.” We compromised on a double number of five-kreutzer stamps, the ones in use for local postage, and ornamented our envelopes with effigies of Franz Josef until they looked like the walls of a chromo-dealer’s shop. CHAPTER IX Sturdy girls, returning from market with veritable Eiffel towers of empty tubs on their backs, strode up the steep banks from the landing as we fled from the enervating luxuries of the inn at Theben and hastened to paddle towards the busy little town of Pressburg, boasting a new railway bridge, as ugly a château as man has ever devised, and as pleasant parks and gardens as ever soldier and nursery-maid chose for their public flirtations. It claims as its chief historical distinction the honor of having crowned within its walls the Hungarian kings since the dynasty was founded. It is a gay little place, with tastefully decorated shop-windows, and signs everywhere in the Hungarian language. In a brief two hours’ paddle we had passed beyond the limit of a distorted dialect of German, and now heard only the soft music of the Magyar speech. No phase of our journeying was more interesting than the experience with this abrupt philological frontier. Below Pressburg the Danube branches into three sinuous arms, cutting the great low plain into two long irregular islands, little better than swamps for the most part--at least, as far as our horizon extended. The canalization of the river, which practically comes to an end in this territory, makes the channel quite plain, and diverts the flow of water from the tortuous branches where the villages cluster on the muddy banks. On the first day after leaving Pressburg the [Illustration: PEASANT GIRL, THEBEN]