"'What's ten pound to me?' says you. 'I wants the pretty baby with the dark eyes and the long lashes,' says you.
"'Them it belongs to is poor, they'd sell anything,' says you.
"'I wants a son,' you says; 'and having the advantages of gold and silver, I can buy one.'
"You calls him by a name of your own choosing, and puts your own name at the end of that. His hands are something dark for the son of such a delicate white lady-mother, but they can be covered with the kid gloves of gentility.
"You buys fine clothes for him, and nurses and tutors and schools for him.
"You teaches him the speech of gentlefolk, and the airs of gentlefolk, and the learning of gentlefolk.
"You crams his head with religion, which is a thing I doesn't hold with, and with holy words, which I thinks brings ill-luck.
"You has the advantages of silver and gold, to make a fine gentleman of him, but the blood that flies to his face when he hears the words of insult is gipsy blood, and he comes back to the woods where he was born.
"Let me be, my daughter, I say I will speak—(Heaven keep my head cool!)—it's good for such as them to hear the truth once in a way. She's a dainty fine lady, and she taught him many fine things, besides religion, which I sets my face against. Tell her she took mighty good care of him—Ha! ha! the old tinker-woman had only one chance of teaching him anything—but she taught him the patteran!"
The clergywoman had never moved, except that when the tinker-mother shook off her hand she locked her white fingers in front of her as before, and her eyes wandered from the old woman's face, and looked beyond it, as if she were doing what I have often done, and counting the bits of blue sky which show through the oak-leaves before they grow thick. But she must have been paying attention all the same, for she spoke very earnestly.