She was always ready to quarrel with Béla, whose sneering ways she resented, all the more that she knew they were well-deserved. But her last words had apparently poured oil over the already troubled waters of the young man's wrath, for now his sullen expression vanished, and a light of satisfaction and of pride lit up his ungainly face:
"And I will fetch my future wife in a style befitting her new position, you may be sure of that," he said, and brought his clenched fist down upon the table with a crash, so that pots and pans rattled upon the hearth and started the paralytic from his torpor.
Then he threw his head back and began to talk still more arrogantly and defiantly than he had done hitherto.
"Forty-eight oxen," he said, "shall fetch her in six carts! Aye! even though she has not one stick of furniture wherewith to endow her future husband. Forty-eight oxen, I tell you, Irma néni! Never has there been such a procession seen in Marosfalva! But Erös Béla is the richest man in the Commune," he added, with an aggressive laugh, "and don't you forget it."
But the allusion to Elsa's poverty and his own riches had exasperated the old woman.
"With all your riches," she retorted, in her turn, with a sneer, "you had to court Elsa for many years before she accepted you."
"And probably she would not have accepted me at all if you had not bullied and worried her, and ordered her to say 'Yes' to me," he rejoined dryly.
"Children must obey their parents," she said, "it is the law of God."
"A law which you, for one, apply to your own advantage, eh, Irma néni?"
"Have you any cause for complaint?"