"I took another sort of thorn away with me. I began to be suspicious of the grand economical zeal of my husband. Such assiduity was not natural. Early one morning he again took horse, called to his greyhounds, and told me not to wait for him to dinner, he would not be home till evening. A certain instinct would not let me rest. I went out into the garden, right to the boundary fence and into the stubble beyond, and then I went on foot into the puszta, through the turnip fields and the Indian corn. Nobody saw me. The vesper-bell was ringing in the village when I entered the courtyard of the herdsman. In the stubble I saw the two dogs hunting a hare on their own account. Truly, a Cockney sportsman who allows his dogs to win their own meat like that! I whistled to them, they recognised me and came leaping around me. 'Where's your master?' The dogs understood me. They began yelping and barking, and darted on before me helter-skelter, with their heads between their legs as if to give me to understand that they would lead me to the spot if I followed them. They made straight for the hut. No doubt they fancied they were doing something very knowing. When I marched in at the door the little servant exclaimed, 'Good gracious!' and let fall the wooden trencher in which she was kneading some dough with a large pot-ladle, and when I advanced towards the dwelling-room door, she stood in my way, and said, 'Please don't go in now!' I boxed her ears for her, first on the right side and then on the left, pushed her into a cupboard and locked the door upon her. Then I opened the door of the dwelling-room. There was nobody there. But the door of a little side room, which in peasants' houses is, as a rule, always open, was closed. On the table, however, I perceived my lord's hat and his riding-whip. I made no disturbance. The clothes of the herdsman's wife lay in a heap on a bench. I took off my clothes and put on hers carefully, one by one. I was just as you see me now."
She stood up before me and turned herself round that I might have a better look at her.
"Then I went into the outer hut again, and picked the ladle from the floor which the maid had let fall in her terror. It was a mess of bacon dumplings that she had been engaged upon. I kneaded the dough for the dumplings, I made twelve beautiful little round ones out of it, boiled them, beat up a nice garlic sauce with them, and poured the whole lot of it into a varnished jug, first tasting to see that it was not over salted. Then I tied up the jar in my kerchief, and set off with it towards the pasturage. But another idea also occurred to me. I concealed behind my apron my husband's riding whip that was reposing on the table, and took it away with me.
"The pasturage is pretty far from the hut. It was somewhat late when I arrived there. The herdsman was quite impatient, and had climbed up a 'look-out' tree, and when he saw my striped dress and bright red kerchief, he began to bawl out, 'Hillo! Come along, can't you! I'll give you what for! I'll teach you something, you cursed blockhead! What have you done with my dinner? A pretty time when they're already ringing vespers in the village. I suppose you've been carrying on with his honour again? Let me catch you at it, that's all, and I'll tickle your hide for you with my whip.' When I got up to him and lifted the kerchief from my head, he stopped short with his mouth open. 'Well, I never! if it isn't her ladyship!'—'True, Peter!' said I. 'I've cooked your dinner for you, and now you see I've brought it to you. Your wife cannot come. She's learning French from my husband. I've also brought with me my husband's whip. I found it on your table. You may flog with it whomever you like, either me or your wife.'"
Here she stopped short. She evidently meant me to find out the rest of the story for myself.
"Poor woman!" I murmured. I was sorry and embarrassed.
She burst out laughing.
"Don't pity me, pray! I am perfectly happy. Gyuricza did not strike me with his whip. I am now mistress in the herdsman's hut."
And she seemed quite proud of it all!
Then she began to tell me of her new hero with real enthusiasm. He was what man was meant to be when first created, all strength and truth; there was nothing artificial, nothing false, nothing effeminate about him. "When he comes home at night he goes to the fireplace to smoke his pipe; then he empties a can of buttermilk to the very dregs. Wine is only put upon the table on Sundays. Then he asks, 'Have you any good dumpling soup, sweetheart?' 'Of course I have, and cured bacon and groat pottage as well.' As soon as it is ready we turn it out and sit down to it. We eat with tin spoons out of a large common dish. No invitation is needed there. The lady herself fetches the water from the spring. The master drinks one half of it and offers the other half to his wife: 'You drink too!' And after that they don't go in for much stargazing, nor do they care a fig for the world and all its thousand troubles. They sleep with open doors, and the four sheep-dogs guard the house.