"If you like."
She went to the fireplace, took a fish out of a big barrel full of the Hortobágy fish, called "Kárász," slashed it with a kitchen knife on both sides, sprinkled it well with salt and pepper, and sticking a skewer through it, placed it beside the red hot embers. Then she sang in her sweet, clear voice:
"Ho! good dame of the Puszta Inn,
Bake me fish, bring lemon and wine,
Set your wench on the watch without,
Bid her tell what she sees in time."
The song has a fascination of its own, bringing visions of the endless puszta with the mirage overhanging its horizon, and echoes, too, of the lone shepherd's pipe, and the sad sounding horn of the herdsman. Besides, is not the whole romance of the "betyárs'," the puszta robbers', life contained in the words:
"Set your wench on the watch without,
Bid her tell what she sees in time"?
As soon as the fish was browned enough, the girl brought it to the csikós. Never is this dish eaten otherwise than by holding the end of the spit in the fingers, and picking off the fish with a pocket knife. It tastes best like that, and a girl cannot show her love for her sweetheart more distinctly than by roasting him a fish on the spit. Then what a delight it is to watch him enjoying the work of her hands!
Meanwhile Klári went on singing:
"'Nine gendarmes and their weapons flash!'
Cries the girl in her frightened haste;
But the betyár gallops his swift bay steed
Where the mirage plays o'er the boundless waste."
Once, when they sang this together, at the line "gallops his swift bay steed," the herdsman would throw up his cap to the rafters, and bring down his fist with a crash on the table.
But now he did not heed it.