"I thought the wooden trays were cradles for babies," said Marushka. "The Gypsies use them for that."
"Yes, but I have seen them used for many things," said Banda Bela. "The peasants carry goods to market in them; in the city the baker boys use them to carry bread, washwomen use them, and cooks use them to cut up meat for goulash or to chop paprika in."
"Banda Bela, we're coming to such a crowded place,—what are all those people doing?" asked Marushka, pointing to a street which was crowded to overflowing with peasants, their white costumes and gay aprons and jackets flashing about like bright birds in the sunlight.
"It must be a market day," said the boy. "I have often seen the village markets when I was travelling with my father. It might be fair time, and that is great fun! Let us go and see, Marushka. They have lots of pretty things in the stalls."
The two children ran down the street, which was filled with carts, covered with gay-coloured cloths, the horses having been taken out and stabled elsewhere.
Stalls had been built up and down the sides of the street and these were filled with fruit, melons, embroidery, clothes, and wonderful crockery. Plates and jugs in gay colours and artistic designs have been made by the peasants in this part of Hungary for hundreds of years, and in the cottages one can see, hung along the walls under the rafters, jugs, cups, and platters of great beauty. No peasant would part with his family china, as he would feel disgraced unless he could display it up on his walls.
Ox carts lumbered down the streets, the huge horns of the oxen frightening Marushka. Boys with huge hats, loose white shirts, and trousers above the ankles, bare-footed girls and girls in top boots, men and women, geese, pigs, horses, and cows, all crowded into the square, where were the church with its white spire and golden cross, the magistrate's house, and the inn named "Harom Szölöhoz" as its three bunches of grapes above the door showed.
"Banda Bela," said Marushka, "what are those women sitting behind those red and yellow pots for? They look so funny with the great flat hats on their heads."
"They are cooking," said Banda Bela. "I have seen these village fairs when I used to travel with my father. In the bottom of those pots is burning charcoal upon which a dish is set. In the dish they cook all kinds of things, frying meat in bacon fat, making goulash and anything else a customer may want."
"Isn't that funny!" said Marushka, whose idea of cookery was the Gypsy fire-pot over a fire of sticks. "What lovely frocks the girls wear! I like those boots with the bright red tops, too,—I wish I had some," and she looked down discontentedly at her ten little bare toes. Banda Bela laughed at her.