The lad, with a face of sunshine, bowed low and ran into the school-houses.
'It is almost their hour for rest, or I would not have disturbed them,' she said to him. 'They come here at sunrise; bring their bread and meat, and milk is given them; they disperse according to season, a little before sunset. They have two hours' rest at different times, but it is hardly wanted, for their labours interest them, and their classes are varied.'
Soon the children all trooped out, made their bow or curtsey reverently, but without shyness, and began with song and national airs played on the zither or the 'jumping wood.' Their singing and music were tender, ardent, and yet perfectly precise. There was no false note or slurred passage. Then they danced the merry national dances that make gay the long nights in the snow-covered châlets in many a mountain village which even the mountain letter-carrier, on his climbing irons, cannot reach for months together when all the highlands are ice. They ended their dances with the Hungarian czardas, into which they threw all the vigour of their healthful young limbs and happy hearts.
'My cousin Egon taught them the czardas; have you ever seen the Magyar nobles in the madness of that dance?'
'Your cousin Egon? Do you mean Prince Vàsàrhely?'
'Yes. Do you know him?'
'I have seen him.'
His face grew paler as he spoke. He ceased to watch with interest the figures of the jumping children in their picturesque national dress, as they whirled and shouted in the sunshine on the green turf, with the woods and the rocks towering beyond them.
When the czardas was ended, the girls sat down on the sward to rest, and the boys began their leaping, running, and stone-heaving, with their favourite wrestling at the close.
'They are as strong as chamois,' she said to him. 'There is no need here to have a gymnasium. Their mountains teach them climbing, and every Sunday on their village green their fathers make them wrestle and shoot at marks. The favourite sport here is one I will not countenance—the finger-hooking. If I gave the word any two of those little fellows would hook their middle fingers together and pull till a joint broke.'