Uncle Dimitri: Do you have any regrets about your stay here at the stud?
Julia: Well, I would have liked to apologize to the Gypsies for wrongly accusing them of stealing my underwear.
Uncle Dimitri: I shouldn't worry about them, they are mostly either dead or heroin addicts in a housing complex in Sofia. What made you think it was the Gypsies who stole your knickers anyway?
Julia: I suspected it was them so I tracked them down. I ordered them to stop and let me search the back of the wagon. I found several pairs of black knickers. Mine are blue, but I suspected they had dyed them to conceal their crime. So I got Boris to give them a sniff. Horses have a keen sense of smell, you know. He neighed and nodded his head, which I took to mean that he recognized my odour. I guess I was just wrong about that.
Uncle Dimitri: Don't worry about it. Mind you, it wouldn't have been the first time that your knickers were found in the back of a gypsy wagon.

Julia: What? What are you talking about?
Uncle Dimitri: Don't you remember last year when you went missing one night?
Julia: No. What happened?
Uncle Dimitri: I went out looking for you. It was a wild and moonless night. I found a gypsy encampment. I saw a camp fire and a queue of men outside one of the wagons. They tried to stop me from entering; they thought that I should join the end of the queue as they had done. I indignantly explained that I was there to rescue my niece. How I managed to drag you away that night I still don't know. They were trying to stop me, and so were you.
I pulled out my SS Luger, closed my eyes and shot. My target was a man with another behind him, so that I could get two of these ruffians with one shot. They were momentarily blinded by the flash from the shot, and I could make my escape. A little trick I picked up in the backstreets of Bucharest during the war. I put you on my shoulder and carried you to Boris waiting in the bushes, and we rode into the night.
Julia: I don't remember this!
Uncle Dimitri: At first I thought you might have been sleepwalking, but then I realized you had been drinking the strong red local wine. I was angry with you that night; later I thought that the wine had perhaps caused a sleep disturbance, but now I can see that you were so young you had not yet learned the effect on you of drinking wine like that. It makes you wild, but also forgetful. I don't suppose you remember the spanking I gave you that night.
Julia: No, but I did wonder the next morning when I woke up why my eyelids and different places were stuck together, and why I was so sore in different places. I couldn't ride a horse for three days.