d people would have
taken it amiss had I remained behind.

[Footnote 31: "Kukoricza gathering," the cutting of the maize or
Indian corn--a great _fete_ in Hungary, like the vintage.]

On one occasion I happened to enter as they were baking, and was
received in the kitchen, where the wife, a rosy-faced, buxom young
woman, was standing beside the stove superintending the motions of
five or six servants, though she herself was more busy than any, with
her own hands kneading the loaves, and tossing them on the
baking-shovel. The husband stood there too, under pretence of lighting
his pipe, but in reality for no other purpose than to tease his wife,
who, during the important affair, scolded everybody who did not move
as quickly as she did, which became her very well.

Already ten large bannocks, fried with goose fat, and enriched with
preserved plums, lay smoking on the hearth; these the good woman,
immediately on my entrance, began arranging in her best dishes, and
offered to me with a welcome smile, her husband assuring me that she
had baked them herself, and adding something about a certain wine
which was particularly good to drink after them.

In the midst of all this work, during which Mistress Kata several
times applied the long handle of the baking tongs to the shoulders of
such as did not bestir themselves quickly enough to please her, the
door was softly pushed open, and the figure of a very old and
shrivelled woman appeared on the threshold; at first she only put in
her head, and looked around with a ghastly and vacant smile, caressing
the dogs, which ran up to her, and speaking to them as if they were
the dearest friends she had in the house; she then slowly advanced
into the room, pausing every now and then, as if waiting to be
invited, and again taking courage to proceed.

Nobody seemed to notice her except myself; they were either too much
engaged, or the fearful-looking creature who advanced towards them was
too familiar a sight to strike them as she did me, who saw her for the
first time.

Her figure was so bent and shrivelled that she did not appear to be
more than four feet high; her head was uncovered, and a mass of
perfectly white hair hung in a long plait down her back, as young
girls used to wear it. The face was furrowed by a thousand wrinkles,
and the vacant and half-closed eyes seemed ever gazing on the same
spot, while her lips were distended in a continual unearthly smile,
while every now a