“And just think too what lots of the well-to-do people have got vans lately and fitted ’em out like hotels so they can play at bein’ gypsies. I’ll bet you yeck posh korauna to your shohaury that they don’t know how to chin a ran nor how to scrape a poovengro, and then they go home to their friends and say, ‘We’ve been gypsying, and it’s delightful.’ Oh, yes, Rye, I know how they talk,—and they say, ‘Really it’s quite inexpensive, you can hire a wagon for five or six pounds a week and if you economize it works out at next to nothing.’ A man cook sees to all the food for ’em, then they have a groom to ’tend to the horse, another man to open the newspaper and so on. Some of ’em pay for it of course, but I dare say some don’t, like the old song says—
“A Rye and a Rawnie
Jall’d yeck divvus
To jib the Romany jibben,
They chor’d a rinkeny vardo
For which they both were stardo
This bis bershor ta dui.”
Being most anxious to secure a portrait of Mrs. Beshaley I asked her husband if he would object to my photographing her.
“Not at all,” was his hearty reply. “I should like one of her myself, but I’m afraid you won’t get her to agree to it.”