While he was talking the curtains of the largest van were pushed apart, an old hag-like gypsy appeared, and, with much groaning, made her way down the wooden steps to the ground. There she leaned heavily on a cane, and hobbling toward her son, asked eagerly: “What’s the pickings like to be, Spico? Is it a rich gorigo town?”
“Rich, Mother Mizella?” the handsome young rye repeated. “The gorigo around here has his pockets lined with gold and will spend it freely if he is amused. You women dress in your gayest and start out tomorrow with your tambourines. You will gather in much money with your fortune telling and we men in the village will not be idle.”
Then, going to the camp fire, over which a small pig was being roasted, he asked, looking around sharply. “Where is leicheen Nan? If she has run away again, I’ll—”
“No, no, Nan hasn’t run away,” the gypsy woman, Manna Lou, hastened to say. “She’s here, Spico. Come Nan, dearie,” she called pleadingly. “Come and speak pleasant.”
The girl, with a defiant flashing of her dark eyes, stepped out of the shadow of a low-branching live oak and stood in the full light of the camp fire.
“Leicheen Nan,” the Romany rye said, and his words were a command, “tomorrow you will go to the village and dance at the gorigo inn. You have idled long enough.”
It was the gypsy woman, Manna Lou, who replied. “Not yet, Spico,” she implored in a wheedling tone—“Nan is only a little gothlin. Wait until she is grown.”
Before the angered young rye could answer, Mizella hobbled to the camp fire and snarled angrily: “I am queen. My word is law. That good-for-nothing leicheen Nan shall do as my son says.”
The girl stepped back into the shadow, her heart rebellious. She said nothing, but she was determined that she would not obey.
The men then sat about the fire and were served by the women, who, with the children afterwards ate what was left.