[Pg 71] There were some Italian servants in the stable-yard here, very lively fellows, whose sprightliness Miska found so attractive that he was quite vexed at being shut out from their society. They were constantly laughing and in good spirits; but when Miska wanted to join in the laugh, they would say in broken Hungarian, "How could they tell all over again what it was they were laughing at so much?" "You learn Italian, mio caro, and then you can laugh with us." "Good!" thought Miska. "If these whipper-snappers, whose mouths are always pinched up like funnels, can learn a few words of Hungarian, I'll soon learn their language. Why," reasoned Miska, "I was only a year old when I began to learn Hungarian, and they say I could talk like a magpie by the time I was two; and now—when I am eighteen, and have got a little down shading my upper lip—can't I learn Italian, when these whipper-snappers could talk it when they were three years old?" [Pg 72]Miska's reasoning was somewhat peculiar, but it was not altogether amiss after all. He began by asking his friends what to call the objects about him; and his good memory served him so well that in a short time he knew the names of most of the implements and different sorts of work which he had to do with. [Pg 72] Six months passed away; but Matthias had a good many other and more important matters to think of than the beggar lad, and he had not once been in Visegrád since Miska had been there. "So much the better," thought Miska; "he will come some time, and then I shall know all the more. If only there were not this learning! But it is no good; it has got to be. And yet why? A little page like me is as wise as an owl if he can read and write, and what does he want with more? I can read and write too.—Hm," he thought to himself, "the man who invented writing—what the thunderbolt did he invent it for? What good could it do him? Well, it made him able to read books." And then presently he muttered, "Donkey! If the king were to hear that now! Well, to be sure, as if there were any books when nobody could write! Then they invented it that they might write—that is[Pg 73] more reasonable; but what is the use of writing when a man does not know how to write books?" [Pg 73] Miska battered his brains in vain to try to make out why it was necessary for him to learn to read, and what good his wisdom
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