ide glitter.

"The beauty of that girl," murmured Borrow, "is really quite--quite--"

I don't know what the sentence would have been had it been finished.

Before three lines of the poem had been read she jumped up and cried,
"Look at the Devil's needles. They're come to sew my eyes up for killing
their brothers."

And surely enough a gigantic dragon-fly, whose body-armour of sky-blue
and jet black, and great lace-woven wings, shining like a rainbow gauze,
caught the sun as he swept dazzling by, did really seem to be attracted
either by the wings of his dead brothers or by the lights shed from the
girl's eyes.

"I dussn't set here," said she. "Us Romanies call this 'Dragon-fly
brook.' And that's the king o' the dragon-flies: he lives here."

As she rose she seemed to be surrounded by dragon-flies of about a dozen
different species of all sizes, some crimson, some bronze, some green and
gold, whirling and dancing round her as if they meant to justify their
Romany name and sew up the girl's eyes.

"The Romanies call them the Devil's needles," said Borrow; "their
business is to sew up pretty girl's eyes."

In a second, however, they all vanished, and the girl after a while sat
down again to listen to the "lil," as she called the story.

Glanville's prose story, upon which Arnold's poem is based, was read
first. In this the girl was much interested. She herself was in love
with a Romany Rye. But when the reader went on to read to her Arnold's
poem, though her eyes flashed now and then at the lovely bits of
description--for the country about Oxford is quite remarkably like the
country in which she was born--she looked sadly bewildered, and then
asked to have it all read again. After a second reading she said in a
meditative way, "Can't make out what the lil's all about--seems all about
nothink! Seems to me that the pretty sights what makes a Romany fit to
jump out o' her skin for joy makes this 'ere gorgio want to cry. What a
rum lot gorgios is sure_ly_!"

And then she sprang up and ran off towards the camp with the agility of a
greyhound, turning round every few moments, pirouetting and laughing
aloud.

"The beauty of that girl," Borrow again murmured, "is quite--quite--"

Again he did not finish his sentence, but after a while said--

"That was all true about the nicotine?"

"Partly, I think," said his friend, "but not being a medical man I must
not be too emphatic. If it _is_ true it ought to be