“The poor gipsy girl can tell your fortune.”
“I don’t believe you’re a Romany,” I said sharply, “you’re much too good looking, and too clean.”
She drew back, resentment in her bearing, and I made haste to placate her by saying:
“The fact is, I have had my fortune told so often by gipsies in the vicinity of Roselake that there is no novelty in it.”
She frowned, and I asked, trying to speak pleasantly, “Where is your encampment?”
She pointed towards the West. “There! Way off,” she grunted.
We sat for a long while in silence. The darkness was like a glorious, blurred, mist-hung web, closing in beyond the circle of light cast by our camp fire. The crescent moon shone palely, but the stars were like crimson fires in the nest of night. There was a smell of honey on the wind, a pungency of pine, a mingling of mellow odors; and over all this the cleanness of the woods that was like a tonic.
Joey yawned finally, his head fell over heavily against my arm, and I said, “Bed-time, Joey!”
“As for me,” the gipsy muttered, rolling over with an indolent, cat-like movement on the soft moss, “I sleep here. This is a good bed. You sleep in the wagon?”
“Yes,” I replied.