printed
two sounding kisses on the fresh, pale cheeks.

"There," she said lustily, "your mother's kiss ought to put some colour
in those cheeks. Heigho, child!" she added with a sigh, as she wiped a
solitary tear with the back of her hand, "I don't wonder you are pale
and frightened. It is a serious step for a girl to take. I know how I
felt when your father came and took me out of my mother's house! But for
you it is so easy: you are leaving a poor, miserable home for the finest
house this side of the Maros and a life of toil and trouble for one of
ease! To-day you are still a maid, to-morrow you will be a married
woman, and the day after that your husband will fetch you with six carts
and forty-eight oxen and a gipsy band and all his friends to escort you
to your new home, just as every married woman in the country is fetched
from her parents' home the day after she has spoken her marriage vows.
After that your happiness will begin: you will soon forget the wretched
life you have had to lead for years, helping me to put maize into a
helpless invalid's mouth."

"I shall never forget my home, dear mother," said Elsa earnestly, "and
every filler which I earned and which helped to make my poor father
comfortable was a source of happiness to me."

"Hm!" grunted the mother dryly, "you have not looked these past two
years as if those sources of happiness agreed with you."

"I shall look quite happy in the future, mother," retorted Elsa
cheerily; "especially when I have seen you and father installed in that
nice house in the Kender Road, with your garden and your cows and your
pigs and a maid to wait on you."

"Yes," said Irma naively, "Bela promised me all that if I gave you to
him: and I think that he is honest and will keep to his promise."

Then, as Elsa was silent, she continued fussily:

"There, now, I think I had better go over to the schoolroom and see that
everything is going on all right. I don't altogether trust Ilona and her
parsimonious ways. Such airs she gives herself, too! I must go and show
her that, whatever Bela may have told her, I am the hostess at the
banquet to-day, and mean to have things done as I like and not as she
may choose to direct. . . . Now mind you don't allow your father to
disarrange his clothes. Moritz and the others will be here by about
eleven, and then you can arrange the bunda round him after they have
fixed the carrying-poles to his chair. We sit down to eat at twelve
o'clock,