“Sarishan rye! And glad I am to see you. Why didn’t you come down into Kent to see the hoppin’? Many a time the Romanys says they expected to see their rye there. Just the other night, your Coopers was a-lyin’ round their fire, every one of ’em in a new red blanket, lookin’ so beautiful as the light shone on ’em, and I says, ‘If our rye was to see you, he’d just have that book of his out, and take all your pictures.’”
After much gossip over absent friends, I said,—
“Well, dye, I stand a shilling for beer, and that’s all I can do to-day, for I’ve come out with only shove trin-grushi.”
Liz took the shilling, looked at it and at me with an earnest air, and shook her head.
“It’ll never do, rye,—never. A gentleman wants more than six shillin’s to see a race through, and a reg’lar Romany rye like you ought to slap down his
lovvo with the best of ’em for the credit of his people. And if you want a bar It was kind of the old dye, but I thought that I would pull through on my five shillings, before I would draw on the Romany bank. To be considered with sincere sympathy, as an object of deserving charity, on the lowest race-ground in England, and to be offered eleemosynary relief by a gypsy, was, indeed, touching the hard pan of humiliation. I went my way, idly strolling about, mingling affably with all orders, for my watch was at home. Vacuus viator cantabit. As I stood by a fence, I heard a gentlemanly-looking young man, who was evidently a superior pickpocket, or “a regular fly gonoff,” say to a friend,— “She’s on the ground,—a great woman among the gypsies. What do they call her?” “Mrs. Lee.” “Yes. A swell Romany she is.”