"Banda Bela, you are poet as well as musician," said the Baroness. "You shall never go back to Harom Szölöhoz to live. You shall stay with me. I will sing to your music, and you shall study music till you are the greatest violin player in all Hungary."
"When a Gypsy child comes into the world they say his mother lays him on the ground and at one side places a purse and at the other a violin," said Banda Bela. "To one side or other the baby will turn his head. If he turns to the purse he will be a thief, if he turns to the violin he will earn his living by music. My mother said she would give me no chance to choose ill, but an old woman near by laid forth both the purse and the violin and I turned my head to the violin and reached for it with my baby hand. When they placed the bow in my hand I grasped it so tight they could scarce take it from me."
"Banda Bela," said Marushka, and her tone was pettish. "You like your violin better than you do me!" The boy laughed.
"My violin has earned you many a supper, Little One; do not dislike it!"
"Oh, Your Graciousness, what are those strange things?" cried Marushka. "They are not automobiles, are they?"
"No, my child, they are the new steam thrashing machines which the government has just bought, and is teaching the peasants to use instead of the old-fashioned ways of thrashing. Now we are getting into the country. See how beautifully the road winds along the Danube! Is it not a wonderful river? There is a famous waltz called the 'Beautiful Blue Danube' and the river is certainly as blue as the sky. See that queer little cemetery among the hills. I have often wondered why some of the gravestones in the village cemeteries had three feathers and coloured ribbons on them."
"If you please, Your Graciousness," said Banda Bela, "I can tell you. That is for the grave of a girl who has died after she was of an age to be married, yet for whom no one had offered the buying money. Aszszony Semeyer told me that."
"Aszszony Semeyer told me that every peasant kept a wooden shovel hung upon the wall of his house with which to throw in the last shovelful of earth upon his loved ones," said Marushka with a shudder. "Ugh! I didn't like that."