“Well, brother, suppose it be?”
“I don’t see why a Romany chi should object to enter into the honourable estate of wedlock with a gorgio.”
“You don’t, brother; don’t you?”
“No,” said I, “and, moreover, I am aware, notwithstanding your evasion, Ursula, that marriages and connections now and then occur between gorgios and Romany chies; the result of which is the mixed breed, called half-and-half, which is at present travelling about England, and to which the Flaming Tinman belongs, otherwise called Anselo Herne.”
“As for the half-and-halfs,” said Ursula, “they are a bad set; and there is not a worse blackguard in England than Anselo Herne.”
“All what you say may be very true, Ursula, but you admit that there are half-and-halfs.”
“The more’s the pity, brother.”
“Pity or not, you admit the fact; but how do you account for it?”
“How do I account for it? why, I will tell you, by the break up of a Roman family, brother,—the father of a small family dies, and perhaps the mother; and the poor children are left behind; sometimes they are gathered up by their relations, and sometimes, if they have none, by charitable Romans, who bring
them up in the observance of gypsy law; but sometimes they are not so lucky, and falls into the company of gorgios, trampers, and basket-makers, who live in caravans, with whom they take up, and so . . . I hate to talk of the matter, brother; but so comes this race of the half-and-halfs.”