“No,” said Jack; “I will not.”
“She sold us to the brown people,” continued the parrot. “Mind you do not buy anything of her, for your money in her palm would act as a charm against you.”
“She has a baby,” observed the parrot-wife, scornfully.
“Yes, a baby,” repeated the old parrot; “and I hope by means of that baby to get her driven away, and perhaps get free myself. I shall try to put her in a passion. Here she comes.”
There she was indeed, almost close at hand. She had a little cart; her goods were hung all about it, and a small horse drew it slowly on, and stopped when she got a customer.
Several gipsy children were with her, and as the people came running together over the grass to see her goods, she sang a curious kind of song, which made them wish to buy them.
Jack turned from the parrot’s cage as she came up. He had heard her singing a little way off, and now, before she began again, he felt that already her searching eyes had found him out, and taken notice that he was different from the other people.
When she began to sing her selling song, he felt a most curious sensation. He felt as if there were some cobwebs before his face, and he put up his hand as if to clear them away. There were no real cobwebs, of course; and yet he again felt as if they floated from the gipsy-woman to him, like gossamer threads, and attracted him towards her. So he gazed at her, and she at him, till Jack began to forget how the parrot had warned him.
He saw her baby too, wondered whether it was heavy for her to carry, and wished he could help her. I mean, he saw that she had a baby on her arm. It was wrapped in a shawl, and had a handkerchief over its face. She seemed very fond of it, for she kept hushing it; and Jack softly moved nearer and nearer to the cart, till the gipsy-woman smiled, and suddenly began to sing:
“My good man—he’s an old, old man—