“Did you ever see me before? Do you know me?”
“No, sir.”
“I’m sorry for that. I have a nice velveteen coat which I have been keeping for your father. How’s your brother Frank? Traveling about Kingston, I suppose. As usual. But I don’t care about trusting the coat to anybody who don’t know me.”
“I’ll take it to him, safe enough, sir.”
“Yes, I dare say. On your back. And wear it yourself six months before you see him.”
Up spoke his wife: “That he shan’t. I’ll take good care that the pooro mush [the old man] gets it all right, in a week.”
“Well, dye, I can trust you. You remember me. And, Anselo, here is my address. Come to the house in half an hour.”
In half an hour the housekeeper, said with a quiet smile,—
“If you please, sir, there’s a gentleman—a gypsy gentleman—wishes to see you.”
It is an English theory that the master can have no “visitors” who are not gentlemen. I must admit that Anselo’s dress was not what could be called gentlemanly. From his hat to his stout shoes he looked the impenitent gypsy and sinful poacher, unaffected and natural. There was a cutaway, sporting look about his coat which indicated that he had grown to it from boyhood “in woodis grene.” He held a heavy-handled whip, a regular Romany tchupni or chūckni, which Mr. Borrow thinks gave rise to the word “jockey.” I thought the same once, but have changed my mind, for there were “jockeys” in England before gypsies. Altogether, Anselo (which comes from Wenceslas) was a determined and vigorous specimen of an old-fashioned English gypsy, a type which, with all its faults, is not wanting in sundry manly virtues.