"It comes to thee, I suppose, as the dower of thy bride? What offence can that be to me?"
"Thou might'st have had it, if the lady could have been brought to favour thy suit. Can'st be friendly with thy rival?"
"Can give thee joy of thy success, man, and dance at thy wedding, if I am invited, and not too far away to come to it."
After that we were on the old terms for the while, and had good sport together among the half-duck and mussel-duck which abounded at Tudworth. Dick did me the kindness to take Luke into his service for the time, who had come to me at the vicarage in hope to be employed; but there was no work for him, and I had no right to burden the vicar with another idler's maintenance.
When, at length, John received letters from Sweden, I went to take farewell of Bess, who remained with her father and grandmother in a cottage on the east of Belton; the rest of the tribe having gone, as was their custom at this time of the year, to Nottingham. When I entered the house, the grandmother, looking fearfully old and wrinkled, was cowering over the fire, and Bess sat opposite her, doing some kind of sewing. The aged crone turned her head, and, seeing me, began to laugh, jabbering in her gipsy tongue, as if to bid me welcome, and would have risen, but Bess gently forced her back into her seat. This mightily incensed the old woman, and she chattered and screamed in anger at Bess, beckoning me to come nearer. As I stood, unable to comprehend all this, Bess said to me—
"Go outside, and I will come to you when she is pacified."
In a little time she appeared.
"Poor Grannie takes you for her husband, who left her in her youth, and went back to his own people."
"His own people?" I echoed.
"He was a gentile who joined our tribe and took the name of Boswell. What his name was, or whence he came, I know not, for Grannie had grown feeble in mind with age, before I heard anything of the story; but my father has brooded on it for years, and persuaded himself that his father was some one of note and wealth, and the marriage lawful, and he himself the heir by right to an estate. He has some papers and trinkets by which he sets great store, as proofs of his notion. 'Tis his belief that if he had money wherewith to fee lawyers, he might oust some man now in wrongful possession of his place and property."