"Why not indeed! How could I help knowing him? He has bought my soap often enough to be sure!"
"But, dear me, ma'am," said the horse-cooper, who desired to display his knowledge, "what use can a herdsman have for soap? Surely, all cowboys wear blue shirts and breeches which never need washing, because the linen has been first boiled in lard!"
"Deary me! Sakes alive! Did you ever! So soap is only wanted for dirty clothes, is it? A cowboy never shaves, does he? Perhaps he always wears as long a beard as a Jew horse-cooper?"
Everyone shrieked with laughter, much to the discomfiture of the snubbed intruder.
"Now, need I have exposed myself to that?" grumbled the unhappy man.
"You don't happen to know the name," continued the herdsman, in a quiet voice, "of that cowboy, mistress?"
"Not know his name! It has but just slipped out of my mind. 'Tis on the tip of my tongue, for I know him as well as my own child."
"Is it Ferko Lacza?"
"Yes, yes, that's it. Why, you've taken it out of my mouth. Perhaps you know him yourself?"
But the herdsman refrained from announcing that he knew him as well as his father's only son. Quietly knocking out the ashes from his pipe, he refilled it, rose, and propped up his cudgel against the straw-bottomed chair to show it was engaged, and no one else might occupy it. Then, relighting his pipe at the solitary candle burning on the middle of the table, he left the room. Those remaining made remarks about him.