She had no sooner read it than she took her sleeves down, and whipped her shawl off a peg and put it on, and took off her apron—and all for an old gypsy. No stranger must take her for anything but a lady.
Thus embellished in a turn of the hand, she went hastily to the door.
She and the gypsy both started at sight of each other, and Mrs. Meyrick screamed.
“Why, what brings you here, old man?” said she, panting. The gypsy answered with oily sweetness, “The little gentleman sent me, my dear. Why, you look like a queen.”
“Hush!” said Mrs. Meyrick.—“Come in here.”
She made the old gypsy sit down, and she sat close to him.
“Speak low, daddy,” said she, “and tell me all about my boy, my beautiful boy.”
The old gypsy told Mrs. Meyrick the wrongs of Reginald that had driven him to this; and she fell to crying and lamenting, and inveighing against all concerned—schoolmaster, Sir Charles, Lady Bassett, and the gypsies. Them the old man defended, and assured her the young gentleman was in good hands, and would be made a little king of, all the more that Keturah had told them there was gypsy blood in him.
Mrs. Meyrick resented this loudly, and then returned to her grief.
When she had indulged that grief for a long time, she felt a natural desire to quarrel with somebody, and she actually put on her bonnet, and was going to the Hall to give Lady Bassett a bit of her mind, for she said that lady had never shown the feelings of a woman for the lamb.