"Quick, quick, into the house!" cried Hatszegi. The baron himself helped
his wife and Clementina to descend and hurried them in beneath the
verandah, which was made of crooked branches and hung over the kitchen
door like a shade over the forehead of a weak-sighted man.
On their approach the woman of the house emerged from the kitchen with
her head tied up in a red handkerchief. She was no longer young, but
ruddy, robust, bright-eyed, and bustling, and as full of sparkle as if
she had just sprung out of the fire.
On perceiving her guests she clapped her hands together.
"Lord deliver us, if it isn't his lordship! And only just married now,
eh!--after all these years! But which is the bride, your lordship?
Surely not this one (pointing to Clementina) for she is an old
dear!--and yet the other is but a child!"
The baron hastened to interrupt this uncalled-for outburst.
"Come, come, my good woman! No chatter now, please, for the hail will be
upon us in a moment; but take these ladies into a room and see that it
is clean and comfortable. Henrietta! pray get out of the rain."
The _csarda_[10] woman kissed Henrietta's hand with great familiarity
and kept on saying in a quavering voice: "Oh, thou tender little
creature! to think of giving them to husbands so early!" cried she. But
Clementina, who was always nervous in strange places, called the baron's
attention to the fact that loud masculine voices were proceeding from
somewhere within the _csarda_.
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