me." This ancient I found a hundred
yards beyond, basketing in the sun at the door of his tent. He greeted
me civilly enough, but worked away with his osiers most industriously,
while his comrades, less busy, employed themselves vigorously in looking
virtuous. One nursed his infant with tender embraces, another began to
examine green sticks with a view to converting them into clothes-pegs--in
fact I was in a model community of wandering Shakers.

I regret to say that the instant I uttered a Rommany word, and was
recognised, this discipline of decorum was immediately relaxed. It was
not complimentary to my moral character, but it at least showed
confidence. The Ancient Henry, who bore, as I found, in several respects
a strong likeness to the Old Harry, had heard of me, and after a short
conversation confided the little fact, that from the moment in which I
had been seen watching them, they were sure I was a _gav-mush_, or police
or village authority, come to spy into their ways, and to at least order
them to move on. But when they found that I was not as one having
authority, but, on the contrary, came talking Rommany with the firm
intention of imparting to them three pots of beer just at the thirstiest
hour of a warm day, a great change came over their faces. A chair was
brought to me from a caravan at some distance, and I was told the latest
news of the road.

"Matty's got his slangs," observed Henry, as he inserted a _ranya_ or
osier-withy into his basket, and deftly twined it like a serpent to right
and left, and almost as rapidly. Now a _slang_ means, among divers
things, a hawker's licence.

"I'm glad to hear it," I remarked. There was deep sincerity in this
reply, as I had more than once contributed to the fees for the aforesaid
_slangs_, which somehow or other were invariably refused to the
applicant. At last, however, the slangs came; and his two boys, provided
with them (at ten shillings per head), were now, in their sphere of life,
in the position of young men who had received an education or been amply
established in business, and were gifted with all that could be expected
from a doting father. In its way this bit of intelligence meant as much
to the basketmaker as, "Have you heard that young Fitz-Grubber has just
got the double-first at Oxford?" or, "Do you know that old Cheshire has
managed that appointment in India for his boy?--splendid independence,
isn't it?" And I was shrewdly suspected