“Do you rokkra Romany?” Upon receiving my reply in the affirmative she said somewhat sharply:
“Who taught you? You’re a kairengro, aren’t you?”
“Why do you think that?” I queried. To this she vouchsafed no reply, appearing not to have heard the question, but after gazing steadily at me for quite an appreciable time she asked:
“Why don’t you get a van and come along o’ us? You must get tired o’ stopping in one place.”
I confessed that such was the case.
“Then why do you stay under a roof?”
Here the older woman joined in with:
“I was born outside myself, I’m the mother o’ seventeen children, and, please the Almighty, I’m going to die outside, why, I suffocates in a house, there ain’t no air in a house,—you never gets air in a house!”
“Look at the pale faces of them as lives in ’em,” said one of the younger women,—“but you”—she continued, turning to me—“are one o’ the dark ones.”