s
hands over the fire. He said little--his wife scarcely allowing an
opportunity for any one else to speak--but seemed to consider that he was
a fortunate man in having such a remarkable wife. There was a handsome
young woman sitting in the only chair in the place, daughter of the old
couple; and her brother lay extended on a bed made of indescribable
things in one portion of the cabin, where the tiles in the roof showed no
openings to the sky. His wife, a thoroughbred Gipsy, sat nursing a
baby--their first-born--on the edge of the bed. The wood walls were
covered with old clothes, sacking, and a variety of odd things, fastened
in their places by wooden skewers, and adorned with a few pots and pans
used in cooking. Here, for six or seven winters, this family had
resided, defying alike the frosts and snows and rains of the most severe
winters. Nor could they be made to admit that a cottage would be more
comfortable; that hut had served them well enough so many years, and
would be good enough as long as they lived. Besides, said Alice, the
rent was a consideration, and the whole yard only cost 2s. a week. This
woman was the mother of eighteen children, of whom eleven were living.
Drawn up close by was a caravan, in the occupation at the time of two
young women, thorough Gipsies in face and tongue, who chaffed us as to
the object of our visit, and begged hard for some kind of remembrance to
be left with them. But we did not accept their invitation to walk up,
but passed down the yard, by heaps of manure and refuse of all kinds, by
another kraal, where a bucket containing coal was burning, and a young
man lay stretched on a dirty mattress, and a little bantam kept watch
beside him, to the steps of another caravan, where, from the sounds we
heard, high jinks were going on with some children. At the sound of a
tap on the door there was an instant hush, and then a girl of nineteen,
who had a baby in her arms, asked us to come in. We looked up in
amazement; the girl's face appeared like an apparition--so fair, so
beautiful, so like some face we had seen elsewhere, that we were confused
and puzzled. In a moment the mystery was solved; we had seen that face
before in several of the choicest canvases that have hung in recent years
upon the walls of the Academy; we had met with the fairest Gipsy model
that ever stood before the students of the Academy, the favourite alike
of the young artist and the head of his profession