"Thank you, uncle, but I hope you don't mean to give it me on my birthday instead of the pony you promised me?"
And he laughed heartily, upon which the old gentleman began to laugh too, contentedly stroking his mustache, consisting of half a dozen hairs. There was something strange in his laugh, as though he had laughed inward to his own soul.
"No, no, you shall have your pony. But I assure you that the umbrella will once belong to you, and you will find it very useful to protect you from the wind and clouds."
Gyuri thought this great nonsense. Such old gentlemen always attached themselves so to their belongings, and thought such a lot of them. Why, one of his professors had a penholder he had used for forty years!
One episode in connection with the umbrella remained fixed in Gyuri's memory ever after. One day they rowed out to the "Yellow," as they call a small island situated just where the Maros and the Tisza met, and where the fishermen of Szeged cook their far-famed "fish with paprika" (a kind of cayenne grown in Hungary, and much used in the national dishes). We read in Márton's famous cookery book that "fish with paprika" must only be boiled in Tisza water, and the same book says that a woman cannot prepare the dish properly.
Well, as I said before, the three of them rowed out to the "Yellow." As they were landing they struck against a sand heap, and Gregorics, who was in the act of rising from his seat, stumbled and lost his balance, and in trying to save himself from falling dropped his umbrella into the water, and the current carried it away with it.
"My umbrella, save it!" shouted Gregorics, who had turned as white as a sheet, and in whose eyes they read despair. The two boatmen smiled, and the elder one, slowly removing his pipe from his mouth, remarked laconically:
"No great loss that, sir; it was only fit to put in the hands of a scarecrow."
"One hundred florins to the one who brings it me back," groaned the old gentleman.
The boatmen, astonished, gazed at one another, then the younger man began to pull off his boots.