a short time Gyuri also asked to be shown to his room.

"The magnet has gone!" muttered the lawyer's clerk.

Hardly had the door closed when Kukucska, the butcher, exclaimed:

"Now we are free!"

He took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, thus showing the head of an
ox tatooed on his left arm, then winked knowingly at Mravucsan. The
mayor seemed to understand the look, for he went to a cupboard and
pulled out one of the drawers, from which he took a pack of cards. The
knave of spades was missing, but that did not make any difference to
the intelligent members of Babaszek society, for they had once before
played "Preference" with those cards, and the last player had simply
received one card less when they were dealt out, though he was supposed
to have the knave of spades, and it was called the "spirit card." If
they were playing spades, the last player in imagination threw the knave
on it, saying: "I play the spirit card!" So now, in spite of this small
difficulty, they decided to play, and the game lasted till daylight. The
Senators, the butcher, and the clergyman played, the lawyer's clerk
dealt, and Klempa looked on, having no money to lose, and went from one
player to the other, looking over their shoulders, and giving them
advice what to play. But one after the other sent him away, declaring he
brought them bad luck, which rather depressed him. So the poor
schoolmaster wandered from one to the other, till at last he took a seat
between the clergyman and the butcher, dropped his weary head on the
table, and went to sleep, his long beard doubled up, and serving as a
pillow. But he was to have a sad awakening, for that mischievous Pal
Kukucska, seeing the beard on the table, conceived the idea of sealing
it there; and fetching a candle and sealing-wax, they dropped some on
the beard in three places, and Mravucsan pressed his own signet ring on
it. Then they went on playing, until he should awake.

Other incidents, and not very pleasant ones either, were taking place in
the house. Madame Krisbay, to whom the mayor's wife had given her own
bedroom, would not go to bed with the enormous eider-down quilt over
her, for she was afraid of being suffocated during the night. She asked
for a "paplan" (a kind of wadded bed cover), but Mrs. Mravucsan did not
possess such a thing, so she brought in her husband's enormous fur-lined
cloak and threw it over madame, which so frightened the poor nervous
woman that she was attacked