When he hears the gipsies cry:
‘Buy, buy laces,
Veils to screen your faces.
Buy them, buy them, take and try them,
Buy, maids, buy.’”
When the gipsy had finished her song, Jack felt as if he was covered all over with cobwebs; but he could not move away, and he did not mind them now. All his wish was to please her, and get close to her; so when she said, in a soft wheedling voice, “What will you please to buy, my pretty gentleman?” he was just going to answer that he would buy anything she recommended, when, to his astonishment and displeasure, for he thought it very rude, the parrot suddenly burst into a violent fit of coughing, which made all the customers stare. “That’s to clear my throat,” he said, in a most impertinent tone of voice; and then he began to beat time with his foot, and sing, or rather scream out, an extremely saucy imitation of the gipsy’s song, and all his parrot friends in the other cages joined in the chorus.
“My fair lady’s a dear, dear lady—
I walked by her side to woo.
In a garden alley, so sweet and shady,
She answered, ‘I love not you,