"What do you mean?"

"What do I mean? I mean that a girl like you ought to have quite a different position from the one you have at present."

"But why do you say a girl like I am?"

"No nonsense, if you please; you must know as well as I do, that you are as clever as you are pretty."

I thought about what my brother had told me, and then looked down at my hands.

"I always thought that I was very silly and very ugly."

"Fiddlesticks! you are neither the one nor the other, and if I were in your place I should go to a town and try to get on."

"To Vienna?"

"No," she said thoughtfully, and then as if a new idea had just occurred to her: "Why don't you go to Buda-Pesth?"

"To Buda-Pesth? But that is in Hungary: what am I to do there?"