gypsy fortune-tellers, and satirizing herself. And thus she spoke,—
“You’re born under a lucky star, my good gentleman, and you’re a married man; but there’s a black-eyed young lady that’s in love with you.”
“Oh, mother of all the thieves!” I cried, “you’ve put the dukkerin on the wrong man. I’m the one that the dark girls go after.”
“Yes, my good gentleman. She’s in love with you both.”
“And now tell my fortune!” I exclaimed, and with a grim expression, casting up my palm, I said,—
“Pen mengy if mandy’ll be bitchadé pādel for chorin a gry, or nasherdo for merin a gav-mush.” (Tell me if I am to be transported for stealing a horse, or hung for killing a policeman.)
The old woman’s face changed. “You’ll never need to steal a horse. The man that knows what you know never need be poor like me. I know who you are now; you’re not one of these tourists. You’re the boro Romany rye [the tall gypsy gentleman]. And go your way, and brag about it in your house,—and well you may,—that Old Moll of the Roads couldn’t take you in, and that you found her out. Never another rye but you will ever say that again. Never.”
And she went dancing away in the sunshine, capering backwards along the road, merrily shaking the pennies in her hand for music, while she sang something in gypsy,—witch to the last, vanishing as witches only can. And there came over me a feeling as of the very olden time, and some memory of another witch, who had said to another man, “Thou art no traveler, Great master, I know thee now;”
and who, when he called her the mother of the giants, replied, “Go thy way, and boast at home that no man will ever waken me again with spells. Never.” That was the parting of Odin and the Vala sorceress, and it was the story of oldest time; and so the myth of ancient days becomes a tattered parody, and thus runs the world away to Romanys and rags—when the gods are gone.
When I laughed at the younger professor for confounding forty years in the church with as many at the wash-tub, he replied,—