It was quite a mystery where the old innkeeper had picked up this maiden, for wife he had none. Some stranger had evidently forgotten her there, and the old man had kept her till she grew into a delicate, slender flower. Her cheeks were not rosy like those of other girls, but a clear, creamy colour, not the tint of sickness, for the life glowed beneath, and, when she smiled, seemed to dazzle and shine like a fire within. Her mouth, with its turned-up corners, was made for laughter, and suited the darkness of her eyes, eyes so dark that none could tell whether they were black or blue, because if once a man looked into them he forgot all else in the world. Her hair was black, twisted into a plait, with yellow ribbon. Other girls damp their hair with quince juice to make it curly, but hers waved and curled of itself.
And the songs she knew! How sweetly she could sing when she liked! If happy she sang, if sad she sang, for there is a song for everything, and, without singing, a peasant maiden cannot live. Nothing makes the work so easy, the time pass so quickly, and the way so short. Early in the morning, when the sky was pink at sunrise, she might be heard singing as she weeded in the garden.
The old innkeeper did not concern himself with business, but had given the whole management of the inn into the girl's hands. She served out the wine, cooked, did the accounts. He meanwhile looked after his beehives, and was busy now, for the bees were swarming.
Suddenly a horse's hoofs resounded from the yard, the dogs barked in the joyous tone with which they were wont to greet an old friend, and the old man called out:
"Klári! go in! Don't you hear the dogs barking; a customer must be here. See to him!"
The girl dropped her striped gown, tucked up for weeding, put on her buckled shoes, washed her hands from the watering can, and dried them with her apron, which she then threw aside, for, under it, she wore another very wide and clean, and with the household keys dangling from her waistband. She untied her gay-coloured kerchief, and smoothed her hair with her moistened palms. Then she broke off a rose from the rose-bush, and stuck it in her hair at one side.
"Picking a rose again!" grumbled the old man. "Maybe only for a gendarme!"
"Why only? Why mayn't a gendarme wear a rose in his shako as well as another fellow? Perhaps you don't think him good enough? That depends on the gendarme."
But after all it was no gendarme whom the girl found sitting at one end of the long table, but the smartest csikós on the whole puszta—Sándor Decsi.
"Sándor!" screamed the girl when she saw him, and clapping her hands, "Sándor! you have come back, my darling."