"What am I then?"
"What are you, sirrah? I'll tell ye. You're a boor, a betyár, a good-for-nothing rascal, a runaway ragamuffin, that's what you are! And you'll be glad enough to kiss my hand, and beg me to make you one of my lackeys, to save you from starvation or the gallows."
"Excuse me," replied Mike Kis, deftly twisting his moustache, "but I am Michael Kis, Esq., proprietor of Almasfalva, which I purchased the day before yesterday from the trustees of the estate of Kázmér Almásfalvi, for 120,000 florins, with the full sanction of the Court, wherefore my title thereto is unexceptionable."
Master Jock fell back in astonishment. "One hundred and twenty thousand florins! When and where did you pick up all that money?"
"I got it honourably," said Michael Kis, smiling. "I won it at cards one evening, when I and a few of my gentlemen friends sat down to play together. To tell you the truth, I won a good deal more
than that, but the balance will do to build up a splendid castle on my estate, where I can reside during the summer."
To Master Jock this part of the matter was quite intelligible; much larger sums than this used to be lost and won during the sessions of the Diet at Pressburg. But one thing he could not understand at all.
"Pray how did you get your diploma of gentility?" he asked; "you are not a gentleman by birth."
"That was a very simple matter. When Whitsun Day was only a week off, I strolled into one of the trans-Danubian counties, and there advertised that a prodigal member of the Szabolcs branch of the noble Kis family was in search of his relations, and if there were any noble Kises who remembered that branch of the family, and had certificates of nobility in their possession, which they were willing to transfer to the undersigned in exchange for one thousand florins, would they be kind enough to communicate with him. In a week's time fifteen members of the Kis family remembered their Szabolcs kinsmen, and brought me all kinds of certificates of nobility. All I then had to do was to select the one which had the prettiest coat of arms; whereupon we kissed each other all round, and traced out the genealogy. I paid down the thousand florins; they recognized me as their kinsman, and advertised the diploma throughout the county; and so now I am a landed gentleman. Look, here on my signet-ring is my crest."
This joke pleased Master Jock even more than his own. Instead of being angry, he covered with kisses the astute adventurer who had more foresight than any one else, had got the better of those who thought they were getting the better of him, and had accepted in good earnest the part which had been thrust upon him by way of a joke.