"A fine leetle dawg, squire!"
"Pedigree dog! Kennel Club," replied Dan, curtly.
"Ho, ho!" laughed the tinker, hoarsely, "and you call yourself a crocus! My Sam! You're a gentleman, you are--a great gentleman."
"Pish! Do I look like a great gentleman in these rags?"
"Ay, that you do, and burn him who says nay," replied Tim, emphatically. Whereat Dan laughed in a somewhat embarrassed fashion, and by way of changing the subject, intimated that the meal was ready.
A meal he called it--by Vesta, goddess of the spit, it was a lordly banquet to which they sat down. Cold beef and pickles, bottled beer and cheese, with a plentiful supply of fresh bread. Can you ask anything better than to eat such victuals in the open air on a warm summer day, with voices of bird and bee, and sigh of wind, and roar of ocean, around? To feed in an airless dining-room were less conducive to appetite.
The pair ate as they had fought, with a will, and the fragments of the feast would scarcely have filled one basket, let alone a dozen. Tim did most of the talking, and Dan could not help noticing that his speech was much more refined than was his appearance. This incongruity he touched on during the progress of the meal.
"Where did you learn to speak so Well, Tim?"
"Do I speak well, rye?" demanded the tinker, with marked surprise. "Well, ye see, I'm a Romany, I am, and we generally speak better than the lower orders of your natives. We have our own tongue, you know--the black language--and speak that among ourselves. But I've been among the Gorgios, rye, in my time, and maybe have picked up their way of talking."
"Were you always a tinker?"