“Well, hang it all, if my existence is so baneful to you—if there is no other way of repairing the mischief I had so unwittingly done—then I can throw myself into a millstream, or any other way to make an end of myself. I am only an encumbrance on the face of the earth. It is quite time for me to trot off into another world.”
“Peace! don’t be so rash. Your death would not make any difference now; and if it did, it is perfectly purposeless to make such a suggestion. I will consider the matter over, look at it from every point of view, and determine what had best be done.”
“Ah, I think I shall have to determine,” remarked the gipsy.
“You! What do you mean? How can you determine?”
“Well, you see it’s simply this. It unfortunately happens that I have been imprudent enough to blow the gaff; but I beg pardon—you don’t understand this sort of language?”
“I confess I do not.”
“Well then I’ve let my tongue run too fast—that you understand?”
“Most certainly I do.”
“If it costs me my life I’ll put matters straight. He may be jolly artful this same doctor, and no doubt he is; but I’ll take good care, if so be as it lays in my power, which I believe it does, to circumvent him.”
“Your language is altogether so foreign to what I have been accustomed to listen to that I hardly know what reply to make.”