"So much the better: if you are an official, I can at any rate tell you what trouble brought me here."
"So it was only trouble drove you here?"
"Certainly. They robbed and stole from me. They have taken away my yellow-flowered calico kerchief, a red 'Home-sweet-Home' handkerchief, which I had intended for you, a silver-crossed string of beads, twelve dollars, ten gold pieces, twenty-two silver buttons, four pairs of silver buckles, and a scolloped-eared, pi-bald, eight-week-old pig...."
"Whew!" exclaimed Kólya as he heard of so much loss. "This is a pretty business. Well, who stole them?"
"No one else than the cursed gypsy woman Marcsa, who lives here in this village."
"We shall call her to account as soon as she appears."
"Naturally. She went there while I was weeding in the garden; she prowled about and stole."
"Well I'll soon have her by the ears, only let her come here."
Not a word of the whole story of the theft was true: but Mistress Boris reasoned as follows:
"You must come here first, gypsy woman, with that scolloped-eared pig: if they find it in your possession, they will put you in jail, and ask you what you did with the rest. Whether your innocence is proved or not, the pig-joint will in the meanwhile become uneatable, and won't come into your stomachs. You may say you got it as a present,—no one will believe you, and the magistrate will not order such a gentleman as Sárvölgyi to come here and witness in your favor."