"Let us run and lead them out, Banda Bela," cried Marushka. "You can make the pigs follow you and I can quiet the geese. It is too bad to have the homecoming of their High-Born Graciousnesses spoiled by these stupids!" Marushka dashed into the throng of geese calling to them in soft little tones. They recognized her at once and stopped their fluttering as she called them by the names she had given them when she was goose girl and they all flocked about her. Then she sang a queer little crooning song, and they followed her down the street as she walked toward the goose green, not knowing how else to get them out of the way.
Banda Bela meantime was having an amusing time with his friends the pigs. They were all squealing so loudly that they could scarcely hear his voice, so he bethought himself of his music and began to play. It was but a few moments before the piggies heard and stopped to listen. Banda Bela had played much when he was watching the pigs on the moor, and his violin told them of the fair green meadow where they found such good things to eat, and of the river's brink with its great pools of black slime in which to wallow. They stopped their mad dashing about and gathered around the boy, and he, too, turned and led them from the village.
It was a funny sight, this village procession. First came Marushka in her little peasant's costume, decked with her wreath and garlands of forget-me-nots, and followed by her snow-white geese. Next, Banda Bela, playing his violin and escorting his pigs, while last of all came the motor car of the High-Born Baron, the Baron looking amused, the Baroness in spasms of laughter.
"Oh, Léon," she cried. "Could our friends who drive on the Os Budavara[12] see us now! Such a procession! That child who leads is the most beautiful little creature and so unconscious, and the boy's playing is wonderful."
"FIRST CAME MARUSHKA"
"They must be the Gypsy children Aszszony Semeyer adopted. We saw them when we were here last year," replied her husband. "What a story this would make for the club! We must give these children a florin for their timely aid."
But the children, unconscious of this pleasant prospect, led their respective friends back into the village by another way, so that it was not until the next day that the "High-Born" ones had a chance to see them, and this time in an even more exciting adventure than that of the village procession. It was the motor car again which caused the trouble.
Marushka and Banda Bela had been sent on an errand to a farm not far from the village and were walking homeward in the twilight. Down the road came a peasant's cart just as from the opposite direction came the "honk-honk" of the Baron's motor. Such a sight had never appeared to the horses before in all their lives. They reared up on their hind legs, pawing the air wildly as the driver tried to turn them aside to let the motor pass. A woman and a baby sat in the cart, and, as the horses became unmanageable and overturned the cart into the ditch, the woman was thrown out and the baby rolled from her arms right in front of the motor. The mechanician had tried to stop his car, but there was something wrong with the brake and he could not stop all at once. Marushka saw the baby. If there was one thing she loved more than another it was a baby. She saw its danger and in a second she dashed across the road, snatched up the little one and ran up the other side of the road just as the motor passed over the spot where the baby had fallen.
"Marushka," cried Banda Bela as he ran around the motor. "Are you hurt?"