loses all value in his eyes
unless it bears directly upon the accomplishment of the object in hand.
Thus it happened that, from the time we sallied out together in search of
a Gipsy camp, until the moment we parted at night, Mr. Smith thought of
nothing, spoke of nothing, remembered nothing, saw nothing, but what had
some relation to the Gipsies and their mode of life. The Zulus were to
be pitied because theirs was a sort of Gipsy life; and the Gipsies' tents
were nothing more than kraals. All his stories were of what Gipsies he
had met, and what they had said; and even our fellow-travellers in the
train were only noticeable because they looked like some Gipsy man or
woman whom he had met elsewhere. We had a short ride by rail, and a
tramp through a densely-populated district, and then we came to the
camping-ground we wanted. It was a spacious yard, entered through a
gate, and surrounded with houses, whose back yards formed the enclosure.
There were three caravans and three kraals erected there, and as it was
Sunday afternoon nearly all the inhabitants were at home. Those who were
absent were a few children able to go to Sunday-school, whither they went
of their own free will and with the approval of their parents. The
kraals were not all constructed on the same pattern--two were circular in
form and the third was square. This was on the right hand at entering,
and had at one time been a tumble-down shelter for a calf, who had many
years before gone the way of all beef--into a butcher's shop. There were
tiles on the low roof--in places--but plenty of openings were left for
the rain to come in, and for the smoke from the fire in the bucket to
find a way out if it chose. The floor was common earth, and very uneven
in places. Alice, the mistress of this abode, was a woman over fifty,
with a face the colour of leather, and vigour enough to do any amount of
work. As we entered, she told Mr. Smith a piteous tale of the loss of
her spectacles, without which she solemnly declared she could not read a
line. She left the spectacles one day when she was going 'hopping,'
hidden under a tile above her head, and when she returned the case was
there, but the spectacles were gone. She carried her licence to hawk in
her spectacle-case, until the time came when she could happily beg the
gift of a pair of new ones. Her husband, a white-haired old man, with a
look of innocent wonder in his face, sat on a lump of wood, warming hi