“No, signore. None.”
“What, not one! You know so many that perhaps a language more or less makes no difference to you.”
“By the Lord, signore, you have seen every egg in the basket.”
I looked him fixedly in the eyes, and said, in a low tone,—
“Ne rakesa tu Romanes miro prala?”
There was a startled glance from one to the other, and a silence. I had asked him if he could not talk Romany. And I added,—
“Won’t you talk a word with a gypsy brother?”
That moved them. They all shook my hands with
great feeling, expressing intense joy and amazement at meeting with one who knew them.
“Mishto hom me dikava tute.” (I am glad to see you.) So they told me how they were getting on, and where they were camped, and how they sold horses, and so on, and we might have got on much farther had it not been for a very annoying interruption. As I was talking to the gypsies, a great number of men, attracted by the sound of a foreign language, stopped, and fairly pushed themselves up to us, endeavoring to make it all out. When there were at least fifty, they crowded in between me and the foreigners, so that I could hardly talk to them. The crowd did not consist of ordinary people, or snobs. They were well dressed,—young clerks, at least,—who would have fiercely resented being told that they were impertinent.