hilst I am here shall this Gorgio learn
Rommany. A pretty manoeuvre, truly; and what would be the end of it? I
goes to the farming ker {166a} with my sister, to tell a fortune, and
earn a few sixpences for the chabes. I sees a jolly pig in the yard, and
I says to my sister, speaking Rommany, 'Do so and so,' says I; which the
farming man hearing, asks what we are talking about. 'Nothing at all,
master,' says I; 'something about the weather;' when who should start up
from behind a pale, where he has been listening, but this ugly Gorgio,
crying out, 'They are after poisoning your pigs, neighbour!' so that we
are glad to run, I and my sister, with perhaps the farm-engro shouting
after us. Says my sister to me, when we have got fairly off, 'How came
that ugly one to know what you said to me?' Whereupon I answers, 'It all
comes of my son Jasper, who brings the Gorgio to our fire, and must needs
be teaching him.' 'Who was fool there?' says my sister. 'Who, indeed,
but my son Jasper,' I answers. And here should I be a greater fool to
sit still and suffer it; which I will not do. I do not like the look of
him; he looks over-gorgious. An ill day to the Romans when he masters
Rommany; and, when I says that, I pens a true dukkerin."

"What do you call God, Jasper?"

"You had better be jawing," {166b} said the woman, raising her voice to a
terrible scream; "you had better be moving off, my Gorgio; hang you for a
keen one, sitting there by the fire, and stealing my language before my
face. Do you know whom you have to deal with? Do you know that I am
dangerous? My name is Herne, and I comes of the hairy ones!"

And a hairy one she looked! She wore her hair clubbed upon her head,
fastened with many strings and ligatures; but now, tearing these off, her
locks, originally jet black, but now partially grizzled with age, fell
down on every side of her, covering her face and back as far down as her
knees. No she-bear of Lapland ever looked more fierce and hairy than did
that woman, as standing in the open part of the tent, with her head bent
down, and her shoulders drawn up, seemingly about to precipitate herself
upon me, she repeated, again and again,--

"My name is Herne, and I comes of the hairy ones!--"

"I call God Duvel, brother."

"It sounds very like Devil."

"It doth, brother, it doth."

"And what do you call divine, I mean godly?"

"Oh! I call that duvelskoe."

"I am thinking of something, Jasper."