Gipsy life and
nature from the Gorgios would of itself indicate the depths of
singularity concealed beneath their apparent life--and this reminds me of
incidents in a Sunday which I once passed beneath a Gipsy roof. I was,
_en voyage_, at a little cathedral town, when learning that some Gipsies
lived in a village eight miles distant, I hired a carriage and rode over
to see them. I found my way to a neat cottage, and on entering it
discovered that I was truly enough among the Rommany. By the fire sat a
well-dressed young man; near him was a handsome, very dark young woman,
and there presently entered a very old woman,--all gifted with the
unmistakable and peculiar expression of real Gipsies.

The old woman overwhelmed me with compliments and greetings. She is a
local celebrity, and is constantly visited by the most respectable ladies
and gentlemen. This much I had learned from my coachman. But I kept a
steady silence, and sat as serious as Odin when he visited the Vala,
until the address ceased. Then I said in Rommany--

"Mother, you don't know me. I did not come here to listen to fortune-
telling."

To which came the prompt reply, "I don't know what the gentleman is
saying." I answered always in Rommany.

"You know well enough what I am saying. You needn't be afraid of me--I'm
the nicest gentleman you ever saw in all your life, and I can talk
Rommany as fast as ever you ran away from a policeman."

"What language is the gentleman talking?" cried the old dame, but
laughing heartily as she spoke.

"Oh dye--miri dye,
Don't tute jin a Rommany rye?
Can't tu rakker Rommany jib,
Tachipen and kek fib?"

"Avo, my rye; I can understand you well enough, but I never saw a Gipsy
gentleman before."

[Since I wrote that last line I went out for a walk, and on the other
side of Walton Bridge, which legend says marks the spot where Julius
Caesar crossed, I saw a tent and a waggon by the hedge, and knew by the
curling blue smoke that a Gipsy was near. So I went over the bridge, and
sure enough there on the ground lay a full-grown Petulamengro, while his
brown _juva_ tended the pot. And when I spoke to her in Rommany she
could only burst out into amazed laughter as each new sentence struck her
ear, and exclaim, "Well! well! that ever I should live to hear this! Why,
the gentleman talks just like one of _us_! '_Bien apropos_,' sayde ye
ladye."]

"Dye," quoth I to the old Gipsy dame, "don't be afraid.