“I am the chap what certain folks calls the Romany Rye.”
“Well, I’ll be jiggered if I wasn’t thinking so and if I wasn’t penning so to my juwa as we were welling down the chong.”
“It is a long time since we last met, Captain Bosvile, for I suppose I may call you Captain now?”
“Yes! the old man has been dead and buried this many a year, and his sticks and titles are now mine. Poor soul, I hope he is happy; indeed I know he is, for he lies in Cockleshell churchyard, the place he was always so fond of, and has his Sunday waistcoat on him with the fine gold buttons, which he was always so proud of. Ah, you may well call it a long time since we met—why, it can’t be less than thirty year.”
“Something about that—you were a boy then of about fifteen.”
“So I was, and you a tall young slip of about twenty; well, how did you come to jin mande?”
“Why, I knew you by your fighting mug—there ain’t such another mug in England.”
“No more there an’t—my old father always used to say it was of no use hitting it for it always broke his knuckles. Well, it was kind of you to jin mande after so many years. The last time I think I saw you was near Brummagem, when you were travelling about with Jasper Petulengro and—I say, what’s become of the young woman you used to keep company with?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t? Well, she was a fine young woman and a vartuous. I remember her knocking down and giving a black eye to my old mother, who was wonderfully deep in Romany, for making a bit of a gillie about you and she. What was the song? Lord, how my memory fails me! Oh, here it is:—