“Dikk ó dovo mush adoi a gavverin lester kokero!” (Look at that man there, hiding himself!) said the
professor in Romanes. He wished to call attention to the grotesque figure without hurting the poor fellow’s feelings.
“Yuv’s atrash o’ ye baryia” (He is afraid of the stones), I replied.
The man looked up. “I know what you’re saying, gentlemen. That’s Romany.”
“Jump up, then, and come along with us.”
He followed. We walked from rock to rock, and over the sand by the sea, to a secluded nook under a cliff. Then, seated around a stone table, we began our conversation, while the ocean, like an importunate beggar, surfed and foamed away, filling up the intervals with its mighty roaring language, which poets only understand or translate:—
“Thus far, and then no more:”
Such language speaks the sounding sea
To the waves upon the shore.
Our new acquaintance was ragged and disreputable. Yet he held in his hand a shilling copy of “Helen’s Babies,” in which were pressed some fern leaves.
“What do you do for a living?” I asked.
“Shelkin gallopas just now,” he replied.