“I call a face a mui,” I said, “and a nose a nāk; and as for mui, I call rikker tiro mui, ‘hold your jaw.’ That is German Rommany.”
The tinker gazed at me admiringly, and then said, “You’re ‘deep’ Gipsy, I see, sir—that’s what you are.”
“Mo rov a jaw; mo rākker so drován?” I answered. “Don’t talk so loud; do you think I want all the Gorgios around here to know I talk Gipsy? Come in; jāl adrée the ker and pi a curro levinor.”
The tinker entered. As with most Gipsies there was really, despite the want of “education,” a real politeness—a singular intuitive refinement pervading all his actions, which indicated, through many centuries of brutalisation, that fountain-source of all politeness—the Oriental. Many a time I have found among Gipsies whose life, and food, and dress, and abject ignorance, and dreadful poverty were far below that of most paupers and prisoners, a delicacy in speaking to and acting before ladies, and a tact in little things, utterly foreign to the great majority of poor Anglo-Saxons, and not by any means too common in even higher classes.
For example, there was a basket of cakes on the table, which cakes were made like soldiers in platoons. Now Mr Katzimengro, or Scissorman, as I call him, not being familiar with the anatomy of such delicate and winsome māro, or bread, was startled to find, when he picked up one biscuit de Rheims, that he had taken a row. Instantly he darted at me an astonished and piteous glance, which said—
“I cannot, with my black tinker fingers, break off and put the cakes back again; I do not want to take all—it looks greedy.”
So I said, “Put them in your pocket.” And he did so, quietly. I have never seen anything done with a better grace.
On the easel hung an unfinished picture, representing the Piper of Hamelin surrounded by rats without number. The Gipsy appeared to be much interested in it.
“I used to be a rat-catcher myself,” he said. “I learned the business under old Lee, who was the greatest rat-catcher in England. I suppose you know, of course, sir, how to draw rats?”
“Certainly,” I replied. “Oil of rhodium. I have known a house to be entirely cleared by it. There were just thirty-six rats in the house, and they had a trap which held exactly twelve. For three nights they caught a dozen, and that finished the congregation.”