“Shawshon baugh?” (how do you do), said Esmeralda, drawing herself up with an assumed look of contempt, as her brothers came up with their donkey and baggage.
“Shawshon baugh?” said they; “where be you a gelling (going) to? I suppose you Romany’s have been married some time.”
“Howah,” (yes) said Esmeralda, “we’ve been married about a year.”
We must confess to a queer sensation that by some gipsy incantation we were no longer free.
“Which is your merle?” (gip., donkey), demanded Noah, stalking up to the front.
“That’s mandys” (mine), said Esmeralda, pointing to the Puru Rawnee, which she claimed for her own. Gipsy wives have evidently separate rights of property, thought we, which we were not before aware of. “The other is my husband’s,” said Esmeralda, looking at us with her dark eyes, which made us feel as if we were merged into another individuality.
“Will you gipsies chaffer with us?” said Noah and Zachariah.
But we remarked, “Your merle’s got no tail.” This was said in disparagement of the one supposed to be theirs, for our donkeys were by no means wanting in this respect. The tail of one was perhaps rather smaller than the other’s.
“Why,” said Esmeralda, “that’s your donkey. You don’t know one merle from another.”
They had got mixed, and we had mistaken the one just come up. The serious earnestness of the gipsy girl gave us a hearty laugh. So they went on rockering (talking) in their Romany mous (gipsy language). As we journeyed onwards, how fragrant the wild flowers. Those wild flowers of Norway can never be forgotten. Gipsies like flowers, it is part of their nature. Esmeralda would pluck them, and, forming a charming bouquet interspersed with beautiful wild roses, her first thought was to pin them in the button-hole of the Romany Rye (gipsy gentleman). We were not the only party with tents and baggage; for we had noticed, as we passed along the road from Lillehammer, a number of white military tents pitched in the valley below us, on a pleasant flat of turf land on the opposite side the River Logan. We were informed afterwards, it was an encampment of the Norwegian militia for military training.