'I am the quality,' said Deborah gravely.
'You!' retorted the gipsy, with sudden and savage scorn. 'You are o' the scum o' the airth!' Then in a moment the wild passion passed, she resumed her half-coaxing, half-imperative manner: 'Come, come, pretty love!'
Deborah had been half startled; now she knew not what to make of the gipsy woman. Did the gipsy really like her, and wish to be kind? Deborah had never moved her large wondering eyes from the gipsy's face.
'I will not come,' she said, 'without Charlie.'
'Well, fetch Charlie, quick!' answered the gipsy with intense eagerness, and stooping forward to whisper the words. Deborah drew back; something within her rebelled; the woman was too imperious and too bold.
'Charlie will not come,' she answered; 'he hates gipsies.'
'Then thou shalt come alone.' Quick as thought the long arm was thrust through the half-open gate and the iron hand round Deborah's wrist, as if to draw her out, when Deborah cried at the top of her voice: 'Jordan, Jordan, Jordan!' An old man in a red waistcoat and his shirt sleeves came running round the lodge from the wood, and at the same moment the gipsy woman, pushing Deborah violently backward, darted away. Deborah was thrown on the back of her head; she got up at once, and stood looking up at old Jordan in silence, with her hand at the back of her head.
'She hath hurt thee, the jade!' said the old man indignantly. 'What has she been a-sayin' and a-doin' to thee?'
Deborah gazed at her fingers: there was blood on them; she raised her clear gray eyes to Jordan's face.
'Why, she hath cut thy head open, my lassie, and badly too! I know them cussed gipsies! Spiteful demons! See ye never meddle with them agen. This comes on it.' And assuming a scolding tone, the old man took Deborah's hand and hurried her angrily into the lodge. He was frightened, very pitiful and very angry, all in one; now he coaxed, now he threatened.