"Take his lordship's gun and little box and carry them into the guest-room!"
"Well, my little girl! how are you? not married yet, eh?" said the baron, pinching her round red cheeks whilst the wench took his box.
"Heh, but 'tis heavy!" she gasped, as if she were quite frightened at the weight of the box. "Won't the gun go off?"
"Don't turn your fiery eyes upon it, or else it might—eh, grandpapa, what do you say?"
"Come, Flora, go in, go in! His lordship is always in such capital spirits. Even when his carriage comes to grief he will have his joke all the same."
The point of the joke was that Makkabesku was a man not much beyond forty though there were flecks of grey on the back of his head here and there. The girl, on the other hand, was scarcely sixteen when the Roumanian gentleman took her to wife. Leonard therefore always made a point of aggravating the innkeeper by pretending to believe that his wife was his daughter and by regularly asking him, as if he were her grandfather, when he intended to get his granddaughter married.
"You need not send help to my carriage, after all," said Hátszegi, after due reflection; "for, by and by I'll see to that myself. I am going back that way. But I should like you to place that little box in some safe place for the time being. It contains 4,000 ducats and that is no trifle."
"Huh! my lord!" cried the innkeeper clapping the back of his head with both hands, as if he feared it was already about to fall off backwards. "Your lordship dares to carry so much gold about with you and stroll so carelessly about in these parts!"
"Carelessly!—what do you mean? I cannot wheel them in front of me on a barrow can I? I want to pay them into my account at Fehervár the day after to-morrow; I have payments to make. That is why I carry them about with me."
"I only meant to say that it is dangerous to go about alone with so much money."