“Muskros sî jukels” (policemen are dogs), said the Gypsy.
“There was a pal of mine who was up to card games [sharping?], and at Doncaster Races he happened to drop a word or two in Romanes (Gypsy tongue) to a mate. A muskro was standing near, and bless me if he didn’t jin the tshib (know the language), and of course my pal and his mate was lel’d oprê (taken up). ’Pend upon it, muskros is jukels.”
A good step farther along the road stood the tavern, the “Black Boy,” whose swinging sign of an Ethiopian countenance I was eager to see, since I was to spend the night there in order to resume my fossil-hunting on the morrow.
“Come and see me a little later at the kitshima (inn) down the road, and mind you bring the missis and your fiddle.” As I rose to go, I noticed Frank gave a sidelong glance at my bulging knapsack, and in order to satisfy his curiosity, I took out a fossil, a fine gryphea incurva, on seeing which he drew back, holding up his hands in real or mock horror, I could scarcely say which.
“Dâbla, that be one of the Devil’s toe-nails, wery onlucky stuff to carry about you! Wherever did you get it from?”
“Off the Beng’s pîro (Devil’s foot), to be sure,” I said, with a laugh, and renewed my invitation pressingly. He promised to come.
What a relief to stretch your limbs before a glowing fire inside an old-fashioned inn, when boisterous winds are shaking the window-panes and driving the loose straw from the cobbled yard into the hedge bottoms. No stranger at this house on the ridgeway, I know every nook of the room. There is the old gun still reared up in yonder corner. From nails in the cross-beams hang flitches of bacon and bulky hams. Plates and dishes arranged on racks glitter in the firelight. The pewter mugs on the dresser and the bright copper warming-pan hanging on the wall reflect the glow of the ruddy flames darting up the wide chimney. Here and there hang modern oleographs whose crude tints have been softened by smoke.
Tea is set on a table over which a lamp hanging from a hook in the ceiling casts a pleasant radiance. During my meal the landlord, ruddy of countenance, looks in and greets me in a friendly way. From his talk with his wife, a slight, frail-looking woman of seventy who sits darning by the fire, I gather that a horse is very ill in the stable, and any moment the veterinary surgeon is expected. Presently, the barking of a dog in the front of the inn announces his arrival in a gig, and the landlord hurries out with a storm-lantern in his hand. In a few minutes, the two men enter, and before the fire the burly vet rubs his hands, talks in clear, sharp tones, then, tossing off a “scotch” smoking hot, he wishes us good-night. Whereupon the innkeeper goes off to the stable.
Tea over, a small maid with chestnut hair and spotless pinafore clears the table, and I move to the high-backed settle opposite the landlady. In the fire-grate a huge chunk of wood burns brightly, and every now and then a puff of wood-smoke comes out into the room.
Addressing the old lady, I inform her that I am expecting some visitors to see me to-night, and they are stopping in a little lane down the road.