Dan was the only guest, as Tim was absent from the camp. He had been away with his cart and donkey for two days, much to the regret of Dan, who wished particularly to see him. Indeed, it was principally on this account that he had left his comfortable waterproof caravan on this wild night and had come down to the gipsy camp. Anxious to question the tinker concerning his connection with Dr. Merle, the vagrant sought an interview, but, to his disappointment, found no one in the tent but Mother Jericho. The old lady welcomed him in a wheezy voice, and offered him the hospitality of her smoky abode. Dan accepted, as, in default of Tim, he thought he might pick up a few scraps of information from the old gipsy. In this he was mistaken. Mother Jericho was as close as an oyster when it so pleased her.
The other gipsies--a dozen in all--were huddled in two caravans, and were more comfortable than the head of the tribe. She, a conservative Romany, preferred the privacy of her own tent to the innovation of sheltering under a tin roof, and coughed and choked over her own particular fire. It was a pitiful spectacle to see this old woman crouching over a few embers in the vain hope of getting warm. Dan pitied her greatly, and said as much when under shelter. To his surprise, his sympathy was received with anything but gratitude.
"I'm well enough, dearie," croaked Mother Jericho, piling on more sticks. "Bless ye, young man, I'm used to this. I can't abear to be cooped up in a Gorgio house. Hawks and eagles don't roost in farmyards, as I knows of."
Dan put a corner of his coat over the shivering Peter who was curled up beside him, and wondered how the old creature could exist amid such wretched surroundings. For the moment he forgot that ardent love of liberty which is the strongest characteristic of the gipsies, and which to them is ample compensation for the miseries which they endure in their wandering existence. In Mother Jericho he saw no romantic queen of a wild race, but merely a frail old woman who should be bestowed in an almshouse, where she could be looked after and protected from want and cold. Such comfort would have been more unpalatable to her than leaky tent and smoky fire.
"Wouldn't you like to have a good house and a little money?" he said persuasively, revolving philanthropic schemes for the bettering of her misery.
"Young man, I have money," replied Mother Jericho, with great dignity. "I could buy a caravan if I chose, but the tent's good enough for me. I was born in one, dearie, I've lived all my life in one, and I'll die in a tent."
"But you would be more comfortable in a house."
"No, dearie, no! It 'ud kill me."
"But this," said Dan, rubbing his eyes, which smarted with the pungent smoke--"this is worse. You can't live here. It will kill you."
"I've lived like this for eighty years, child, and it's not at my time of life that folks change. You are a Gorgio gentleman, and like to live in a fine house; I am a Romany, and the tent is my home."