“Other side the hawthorn,” he grunted. “Go look.”
Spread to dry across the sheep-sorrel, long strips of canvas bore inscriptions red and blue: “Gypsy Fair,” “Abram the Magician,” “Performing Quadrupeds,” “Madge the Egyptian Seeress tells your Future,” “Equine Theatre,” “Terry the Horseflesh Wonder,” “Ride the Gypsy Mare.” The boy returned with round eyes alight. Here was the Romany Rye, not in grandfather’s book, but in real life.
“Do you—do you keep a seeress?” he cried. “And a real magician?”
“Come here,” said the man mysteriously. “What’s wrong with your nose?” He tweaked that organ viciously three times, and produced in swift succession a whittled square of black tobacco, a stag-horn knife, a blue cotton handkerchief. “Beats all,” he marveled. “Beats me, Squair, why ye ever stowed those up there! Gettin’ hunchback, too, ain’t ye? Bend over.” Miles felt the man’s hand slip beneath his collar, then something cold between the shoulder-blades. “Well, no wonder,” said the magician. There in his hand was a bell-mouthed flageolet, with tarnished German-silver keys.
“Are you Abram?” asked the boy, laughing, but a little daunted.
The other nodded. “Onhitch Terry. Now ye watch.” Putting the flageolet to his lips, he squealed forth a sprightly air. At the first notes the pipe-clayed pony reared on his little hind-legs, and, keeping rude time, staggered through a precarious pirouette.
“He can choose colors, too,” said his master, when Terry had dropped to all fours, “and add sums, and fire me a pistol, and play me a toon on bells.”
“And carry me on his back, standing up,” called a treble voice above them. A barefoot girl with strange light-colored hair, and a woman in gray calico, stood on the edge of the grassy crater.
“We’re campin’ in the cellar,” explained Abram,—“my little girl and my wife; she’s Madge the Seeress.”
“Are you—are you,” faltered Miles, fearing to give offense—“are you—Egyptians, please?”