st every bonnet;
so, if you are employed by me, you had better learn it as soon as you
can, that we may discourse together without being understood by every
one. Besides covering his principal, a bonnet must have his eyes about
him, for the trade of the pea, though a strictly honest one, is not
altogether lawful; so it is the duty of the bonnet, if he sees the
constable coming, to say, The gorgio's welling.'

'That is not cant,' said I, 'that is the language of the Rommany Chals.'

'Do you know those people?' said the man.

'Perfectly,' said I, 'and their language too.'

'I wish I did,' said the man; 'I would give ten pounds and more to know
the language of the Rommany Chals. There's some of it in the language of
the pea and thimble; how it came there I don't know, but so it is. I
wish I knew it, but it is difficult. You'll make a capital bonnet; shall
we close?'

'What would the wages be?' I demanded.

'Why, to a first-rate bonnet, as I think you would prove, I could afford
to give from forty to fifty shillings a week.'

'Is it possible?' said I.

'Good wages, ain't they?' said the man.

'First-rate,' said I; 'bonneting is more profitable than reviewing.'

'Anan?' said the man.

'Or translating; I don't think the Armenian would have paid me at that
rate for translating his Esop.'

'Who is he?' said the man.

'Esop?'

'No, I know what that is, Esop's cant for a hunchback; but t'other?'

'You should know,' said I.

'Never saw the man in all my life.'

'Yes, you have,' said I, 'and felt him too; don't you remember the
individual from whom you took the pocket-book?'

'Oh, that was he; well, the less said about that matter the better; I
have left off that trade, and taken to this, which is a much better.
Between ourselves, I am not sorry that I did not carry off that pocket-
book; if I had, it might have encouraged me in the trade, in which had I
remained, I might have been lagged, sent abroad, as I had been already
imprisoned; so I determined to leave it off at all hazards, though I was
hard up, not having a penny in the world.'

'And wisely resolved,' said I; 'it was a bad and dangerous trade, I
wonder you should ever have embraced it.'

'It is all very well talking,' said the man, 'but there is a reason for
everything; I am the son of a Jewess, by a military officer'--and then
the man told me his story. I shall not repeat the man's story, it was a
poor one, a vile one; at last he observed,