Therefore, when she next appeared I proffered my request.
“No!” she replied, politely but very firmly. “I wouldn’t have my photograph taken for any money,—my brother once wanted me to have it done, but I wouldn’t, and then he offered me a golden sovereign if I would have it taken, but I didn’t, and I never will. Can’t you draw?” she inquired, and upon receiving my reply in the affirmative, added—
“You are welcome to draw my portrait at any time, but I won’t be photographed if I know it.”
Considering this a great concession, and fearful lest the permission should be withdrawn, I made my working sketch on the spot.
I could not then, and I cannot now, understand the difference in effect on the sitter between having a portrait photographed or drawn. That there was to her some subtle distinction which she probably could not, and most certainly would not, explain there can be no manner of doubt, and I can only suggest that photo-chemical action was a mystery to her, and that, in a subconscious or indefinable way, it was regarded as likely to rob her of some part of her psychic entity.
MRS. BESHALEY.
The ordeal over, Mr. Beshaley picked up the thread of our earlier conversation and continued—
“Well, there’s good and bad folk among us the same as other people, but gypsies have always had a bad name among the gorgios,—you might almost think gypsies were all bad, and all the gorgios good,” he added, laughing. “I know one gorgio,” he went on, “who said, ‘Drive all the gypsies away somewhere, I don’t care where they go, so long as they don’t come near me,’ yet mind you this very man reads the lessons in church.