"No, dearest, I am not a hard man, and I did not come to quarrel with you, but only to show you that I am alive, and not dead, though I know how happy you would be if I were."
"Sándor! Then you want me to go and buy matches?"
"Matches, is it?" said the man. "That's the way with you girls. If you fall into the ditch, then it's three boxes of matches from the Jew, a cup of hot coffee, and it is all over. But surely the wiser plan would be to avoid the ditches altogether!"
"Don't speak about it. Do you remember," the girl asked, "how, when first we met, we were playing that game, 'I fell into the well. Who pulled you out? Sándor Decsi!' And you did pull me out!"
"But if I had thought it was for someone else . . . !"
"Heigho!" sighed the herdsman, "that was long ago. Before ever the Dorozsma Mill was sung about."
"Is that something new?" The girl stooped over the bench closer to the lad. "Sing it first, and then I will learn it."
So Sándor Decsi set his back against the wall, put one hand to his cap and the other on the table and commenced the tune, the sad air suiting the sadness of its words:—
"Dorozsma's mill, Dorozsma's mill,
The wind has dropped, 'tis standing still.
Ah! faithless thou hast flown, my dove!
Another claims thy life, thy love,
This is the reason, if you will,
Why turns no more Dorozsma's mill."
Such a song it was as is born on the plains and blown hither and thither like the thistledown scattered by the wind. The girl tried the air after him, and where she failed the csikós helped her, and so it went on till they both knew it, and sang it together perfectly. And then, at the finish, they kissed each other. This was the end of the song.