“That’s the French for it, is it, sir?” replied the tinker, gravely. Not a muscle of his face moved.
“The coals,” I added, “are hangars or wongurs, sometimes called kaulos.”
“Never heerd the words before in my life,” quoth the sedate tinker.
“The bellows is a pudemengro. Some call it a pishota.”
“Wery fine language, sir, is French,” rejoined the tinker. In every instance he repeated the words after me, and pronounced them correctly, which I had not invariably done. “Wery fine language. But it’s quite new to me.”
“You wouldn’t think now,” I said, affably, “that I had ever been on the roads!”
The tinker looked at me from my hat to my boots, and solemnly replied—
“I should say it was wery likely. From your language, sir, wery likely indeed.”
I gazed as gravely back as if I had not been at that instant the worst sold man in London, and asked—
“Can you rākher Rommanis?” (i.e., speak Gipsy.)