Six months passed away; but Matthias had a good many other and more important matters to think of than the beggar lad, and he had not once been in Visegrád since Miska had been there.
"So much the better," thought Miska; "he will come some time, and then I shall know all the more. If only there were not this learning! But it is no good; it has got to be. And yet why? A little page like me is as wise as an owl if he can read and write, and what does he want with more? I can read and write too.—Hm," he thought to himself, "the man who invented writing—what the thunderbolt did he invent it for? What good could it do him? Well, it made him able to read books."
And then presently he muttered, "Donkey! If the king were to hear that now! Well, to be sure, as if there were any books when nobody could write! Then they invented it that they might write—that is more reasonable; but what is the use of writing when a man does not know how to write books?"
Miska battered his brains in vain to try to make out why it was necessary for him to learn to read, and what good his wisdom would do him.
One day the governor put a book in his hands. "Here," said he, "little brother Michael, you know how to read now, and the king's reader is ill. Suppose you were to try and get his place; it would be a fine thing for you."
"Reader!" said Miska. "Do I want his place? What should I gain by it? It would be a great deal better if I could go out hunting sometimes; my eyes see green when the horns are sounded, and here I have to be 'selling acorns.'"[8]
[8] Sticking at home.
"That will come, too, in time, Michael," said the governor; "but now give your attention to this book. There are some very fine stories in it, and I should like, when His Highness the King comes, to have some one who can read well and intelligently to him; for His Highness says that I read like a Slovack clerk, and yet none of my family were ever Slovacks, or ever lived on kása."[9]
[9] Kása, the chief food of the Slovack peasants, is made of millet or potatoes boiled in milk.
What was to be done? At first Michael read the book with reluctance, and merely because he was obliged to do so; but later on he became more and more interested. Presently he felt as if at last he knew what was the good of writing and reading.