d hours; no one would ever think of suggesting
that a gipsy needed rest; the clarinetist, it is true, rolled off his
seat at one time, and had to be well shaken ere he could blow again, but
the leader--as good a leader, mind you, as could be found in the
kingdom--had only paused when the dancers were exhausted, or when bite
and sup were placed before him. There they were, perched up on a rough
platform made up of packing-cases borrowed from the station-master; the
czimbalom player in the centre, his fat, brown hands wield the tiny
clappers with unerring precision, up and down the strings, with that
soft, lingering tone which partakes of the clavecins and the harp alike.
At the back the double-bass, lean and dark, with jet-black eyes that
stare stolidly at his leader.

There is a second fiddle, and the fat clarinetist and, of course, the
leader--he whose match could not be found in the kingdom. He stands on
the very edge of the rough platform, his fiddle under his chin, and he
stoops well forward, so that his hands and instrument almost touch the
foremost of the dancing pairs.

They--the dancers--crowd closely round the gipsy band, for so must the
csardas be danced, as near the musicians as possible, as close together
as the wide, sweeping petticoats of the girls will allow.

Such petticoats! One on the top of the other, ten or a dozen or more,
and all of different colour: the girls are proud of these
petticoats--the number of them is a sign of prosperity; and now as they
dance and swing from the hips these petticoats fly out, caught by the
currents of air until they look like gargantuan showers of
vividly-coloured petals shaken by giant hands.

Above the petticoats the girls' waists look slim in the dark,
tight-fitting corslet, above which again rises the rich, olive-tinted
breast and throat; full white sleeves of linen crown the bare, ruddy
arms, and ribbons of national colours--red, white and green--float from
the shoulders and the waist.

The smooth, thick hair is closely plaited, from the crown of the head in
two long, tight plaits; it is drawn rigidly away from the forehead,
giving that quaint, hard finish to the round, merry face which is so
characteristic of the Asiatic ancestry.

Each one of them a little picture which seems to have stepped straight
out of a Velasquez canvas, the bell-shaped skirt, the stiff corslet, the
straight, tight hair and round eyes full of vitality.

The men wear their linen shir